The Missing Piece of Me
by lauren3210
Summary: What would have happened if Stefan hadn't been able to find a cure for Damon's werewolf bite?  Would Elena have ever recovered?  Rated M for future sexual content.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This story has been knocking around my head for a while, so insistent that I'm actually starting to dream about it, and it's been making it hard for me to concentrate on my other stories. So, I thought I would try to write it down, in the hopes that I might get a bit of peace, LOL. I have been wondering how much Elena can take, before she eventually breaks from all the grief and stress that she has to deal with, and I think, if Damon had died, we would have seen her break then. So, this is my version of how Elena would have coped - or not - had Damon not survived the werewolf bite. This first chapter is a prologue, cataloguing everything that happened during the season 2 finale, from Elena's POV. The aftermath of that will follow. I'm really not sure about this story, so any reviews you could give me would be greatly appreciated!**

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><p><strong><em>There are five stages of grief. Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Depression; Acceptance.<em>**

**_But what happens if you never reach that final stage?_**

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><p>I haven't slept in days. A couple of hours here and there, but since the night of the ritual not even a moment. Because sleeping would mean closing my eyes. And I can't do that. I can't close my eyes, because I know the images that would start to replay the second I do. So I don't sleep. Instead, I wander around the house, trying not to think about all the people that I've lost. Of course I think about them anyway.<p>

I'm watching Jeremy sleep. I stand here outside his room, looking through the open doorway, and all I can think is that this is my fault. He's all alone now, and it's my fault. He says at least he has me, but I know that's not enough. He needs a family, and one adopted sister who is actually his cousin isn't exactly a normal recipe for a healthy family unit. I shut his door quietly; I don't want my restless wanderings to wake him. At least one of us is getting some sleep in this house.

I turn, and I see the door to Jenna's room is open. Jeremy must have gone in there for something. Or maybe Alaric. It must have been for something important, because they have both had as much trouble as me even walking past her room recently. I peek inside for a moment – I have to force myself to do even this small thing – and I see the framed photograph of Jenna and Alaric on her night stand. She was so close to having a fantastic life. Guilt washes over me again; guilt for not telling her about my life sooner; guilt for not protecting her better, for not preparing her more. I shut the door and turn away.

"That'll get easier. But you know that."

I'm surprised to hear him, but at the same time, there's a part of me that knew he was there. It's like a weird sixth sense that has developed inside of me over the past months of knowing him. I'm not sure that I like it. I see the look on his face, and I know why he is here. I don't want to talk about it, don't want to deal with it. I'm struggling enough with my own guilt, I'm not strong enough to absolve him of his.

"What do you want, Damon?" I ask him anyway, because I know he won't leave until he's said what he has to say. He's the most stubborn person I've ever met, and it drives me crazy.

"I want to apologise."

I shake my head at him. I really can't deal with this now. "Damon –"

"Please. Elena feeding you my blood I was wrong."

"Yes, you were." I say, because he was. Taking that choice away from me, the choice that he himself was denied, was a betrayal of the trust between us that we had worked so hard to build.

"And I know I don't deserve your forgiveness, but I need it."

His eyes are pleading with me to give him that, but I'm not ready to. I know I will eventually though. I've already tried going down the root of cutting him out of my life, telling him that he'd lost me forever. It didn't last. I don't know why, but sometimes I feel as though this man could break me into a million pieces a thousand times over, and I will still forgive him. I wish I knew why that is.

"And I need some time. Maybe a lot of time." I say, because although I know I'll forgive him, I don't want to give him that just yet. I know it's cruel, but a little part of me feels better knowing that I'm not the only one drowning in grief right now. I know I'm using him to make myself feel better, but if he knew, he'd let me have that. He forgives me for everything too.

"Sure, of course. Take all the time you need."

He smiles at me, and then he's gone. A part of me wonders where that tenacity of his is hiding, why he didn't stay and push me like he normally would. Giving people space is not something Damon Salvatore is known for. The bigger part of me is still consumed with my own feelings though, so I don't give it too much thought. There'll be time enough for that later, I think.

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><p>Caroline called and told me to meet her in the town square. There's going to be an outside showing of <em>Gone With The Wind<em>, and she has decided that we should all be there. I drag Jeremy along with me; he needs to get out of the house. We both do. Caroline brings the food and I bring the blankets. It might seem weird, that a vampire who doesn't need to eat should be the one in charge of the human sustenance, but we've been friends for so long that some traditions just won't die out. I can't cook, so Caroline and Bonnie have always done the catering for our get-togethers. We pick a spot and get settled, waiting for the sun to go down and the movie to start. I'm looking forward to it. I need the distraction.

A shadow falls over the blanket and I look up. There was a time when even just noticing Stefan from across the room would make my heart pick up speed. I wonder vaguely when that reaction stopped, but I'm too numb with grief to give it too much thought. I can muster up enough strength for annoyance at his arrival though. He knows today was supposed to be a day off from all the many problems in our lives, and I can tell by his expression that he's come to talk about them.

"Look who couldn't resist an epic romance." My voice is almost dripping with sarcasm, but I don't really care. I wanted this day for myself, and he is ruining it.

"Will you come take a walk with me?" Stefan signals me with his eyebrows, and I sigh inwardly. I really don't want to talk about things right now. I go with him though, because I can see that I don't really have much choice.

"You're breaking the rules, you know." I say as we wander among the trees. "Movie night is supposed to be a distraction. Tomorrow we can return to our regularly scheduled drama." My tone is still a bit sarcastic, but I can't seem to make it stop. I'm not sure I want to.

"I know, I wish this could wait, but it can't." Stefan's voice has an edge to it, and a sense of foreboding wells inside me. "Listen, um, the other night when Damon was helping Caroline and Tyler, something happened." I stare at him, not having a single idea where he might be going with this. What did the other night matter? "Tyler was starting to transform... and Damon was bitten."

I stare at him harder. How is that possible? Werewolf bites kill vampires, and Damon can't die. Even the idea of that is... unfathomable.

"What? Is he gonna..." I can't even finish the sentence out loud, _that_ is how impossible this situation is.

"Yeah." Stefan nods his head once, and his gaze drifts downwards.

For a moment, I can't think, and then all of a sudden, another wave of guilt, bigger than I have ever experienced, comes crashing over me. _I told him I needed time._

"Oh my God. He came to the house this morning, and tried to apologise. I basically slammed the door in his face!" I am so horrified with myself, I can't even think straight.

"He told me not to tell you but I figured if you wanted to talk to him... I wouldn't wait."

The grief pouring out of his eyes in that moment pulls me out from under my own feelings. "Stefan..."

"It's not over. There might be a cure. But I have to find Klaus to get it."

So I can lose them both? Is he insane? "No, he's going to kill you!"

"No, he had a chance to kill me, but he didn't." Stefan sighs and looks imploringly at me. "Whatever Damon's done, whatever's led him here, I'm the one who made him become a vampire in the first place. So if there's a chance for a cure, I owe it to him to find it."

I hug him, partly to relieve some of his guilt, but mainly to try and push down my own. Because he's wrong. Some of the things that have led Damon here is down to me, and I know it.

"Go talk to him. Tell him that there's still hope."

I nod and let him go, and all I can think about is getting to Damon. Because this isn't actually happening. If I can just look at him, look into those bright blue eyes of his, then I'll be able to see that I'm right. This _isn't happening._

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><p>Night has fallen by the time I arrive at the Boarding House. Alaric's car is there; Stefan must have told him about Damon too. I get out of the car and I know that he's still here. That subtle little click in the base of my sternum whenever we are in proximity to each other goes off. I sense something in the bushes, and I wonder if that's why I can sense him. Maybe he's out here, waiting to tell me that it's all been a misunderstanding and he's fine. I look around and see nothing, but when I turn back, someone grabs me. Before I can yell out, Sheriff Forbes puts a hand over my mouth, holding me so I can't get away.<p>

She hands me over to one of her deputies, who walks me down the driveway and into a police car, hidden in the bushes. He drives me to the station, ignoring my questions and pleads to be let out. I am plonked into a chair outside the sheriff's office, and told to wait until Liz gets back.

I sit there, alternating between anger at my treatment, and desperation at my need to find Damon. He needs me, and I need to get to him. Finally, the sheriff walks in, and I follow, hot on her heels, demanding answers.

"Where's Damon? What have you done to him?" She has to have done something. I can feel my anger bubbling just underneath the surface.

She looks at me with something like disgust on her face. "Why do you even care? You know what they are, what they do."

I take a deep breath. Temperance is needed for this situation. "I understand why you hate them, but you're wrong."

"They're murderers Elena! End of story."

No they're not, actually. In fact, they often do much more to keep this town safe than you ever could. I open my mouth to say this exact thing, but we are interrupted by another officer.

"Damon Salvatore was just spotted outside, entering the Grill."

Desperation takes over me again, now that I know where he is. "Wait. You have to let me come with you." I plead. "He's sick, he's not himself."

Sheriff Forbes looks at me before turning to the officer. "Keep her here."

The man nods, and before I can even open my mouth to protest, the door is slammed shut and locked, holding me prisoner. I pace the room for what feels like hours, worry for Damon so acute that I'm finding it hard to think. The adrenaline coursing through my veins is so acute it's almost painful, and I lean over the back of a chair to catch my breath. And that's when an idea comes to me. I move to the window and rip open the blinds. Then I grab the chair and swing it as hard as I can, smashing the glass. I know I don't have long; the deputy left in charge of me will be in here at any moment, so I get up on the sill and jump out. Now I just have to find him.

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><p>I run through the square. I know he has to be here somewhere. He had been at the Grill only a few minutes ago, and I know him well enough to know that they wouldn't have caught him. I turn around on the spot, desperation creeping in again, but just as I do, that little click in my chest happens again.<p>

"Elena."

His voice is hoarse, and when I spin around, it is all I can do not to fall to the floor on the spot. He looks so bad. He sweating and stumbling and whispering. This person in front of me is not _my _Damon Salvatore. My Damon is beautiful, swaggering and _loud_. I run up to him and put my arm around him.

"Come on, we need to get you out of here, let's go." I look around, terrified that a police officer will see us.

"Where are we going?" He leans on me, and suddenly there's a faraway look in his eyes, and I realise that he's hallucinating, like Rose did. He trips over his own feet and falls, and he's too heavy for me to hold up.

"Relax. We need to get you out of here." I'm trying to convey to him the danger he is in, but he's too far gone to notice. He looks up at me, and I know he's not really here. His mind is somewhere else completely, and I start to feel afraid. I'm not afraid of _him_, just the situation. It's been a long time since I've been scared of him. I'm not sure I ever really was.

Out of nowhere he suddenly rushes at me, slamming me into a wooden trellis with lights strewn around it.

"I choose you, Katherine."

He leans towards me, and I know now what he thinks he's seeing. "Look at me. It's Elena. It's Elena." I'm trying to get through to him, but I'm having no effect. Deep in the back of my mind, that hurts a little. I've always been able to get through to him. "No. Damon, no." I'm trying to push him away, but of course he's much too strong.

"I have to, if we are to be together forever."

He leans in, his face morphing into the vampire features, and I know what's coming. His fangs pierce my neck, and the first pull of blood hurts. It's in the same place as Klaus bit me two days earlier, and the skin is still sensitive there, but oddly, it doesn't hurt as much as I was expecting it to. It doesn't even hurt as much as when Stefan drinks from my finger. I have to stop him though, so I keep trying to get through to him, babbling almost incoherently.

"Damon stop. You're hurting me. Damon, you don't have to do this. Please stop. You're hurting me!" Fear that I won't be able to make him stop floods through me, and in that instant he pulls away.

He stares at me for a moment, and the look of pure horror on his face is more than I can bear. I feel yet more guilt, making him think that he was seriously hurting me, but I didn't know any other way to make him stop.

"Elena." He whispers my name, then falls to the ground, and I don't know if it's because he is too weak to stand, or if the thought of hurting me is too much for him to bear. I think maybe both.

I kneel down next to him, and whisper his name soothingly. His head falls forward, and I cradle him in my arms. I'm still looking out for police officers. We need to get out of here, now.

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><p>I manage to get him into Caroline's car – we have a spare for each other's cars, in case of an emergency (or just stupidity) – and drive him back to the Boarding House. I get him upstairs and lay him on his bed. He's kind of out of it; hallucinating again probably. I go into his bathroom and wet down a wash cloth, then stand by the bed, looking at him. I thought that this was what I wanted, that seeing him would take away all my fears and tell me that Stefan had been being over dramatic. But he wasn't. Damon is dying. The thought rattles around my head incredulously. This shouldn't be possible.<p>

His eyelids flutter weakly and he stares up at me, wariness etched on his features, as though he's not sure he should trust what his eyes are telling him. "Elena?"

"It's okay, Damon." I lean over him, wanting him to know that it's really me and his fevered mind isn't playing tricks on him. "I'm right here."

"Elena, get out of here. I could hurt you." He waves his hand ineffectually, trying to shoo me away.

"No, you won't." I put my hand on his shoulder. Even the simplest touch between us has always been significant. It grounds us both, and it's something I have never experienced with anyone else before. "I'm here until the very end. I'm not leaving you." Of course, by the end, I don't mean his death, I mean the end of this weird illness that he will obviously recover from.

"Get out of here!" He tries to growl fiercely at me, but his sentence ends in a wracking cough that shakes his entire body. He puts his hand over his chest, and I scramble up onto the bed, putting myself behind him so I can hold him. I try to soothe him, making shh-ing sounds as I attempt to wipe the sweat off his brow. "It's okay," I say, over and over again.

"It's not." I hear him whisper. "It's not okay. All those years I blamed Stefan. And no one forced me to love her. It was my own choice."

I know he is talking about Katherine, and my heart aches at just how broken he sounds. I rock him slightly, and make more comforting noises.

"I made the wrong choice." He leans his head back to look up at me. "Tell Stefan I'm sorry."

I want to tell him he can say it himself, when Stefan comes back with the cure. I want to tell him that this isn't over. I want to shout at him for giving up too easily. But I can't, because he looks so broken. He needs me to be strong for him. "I will." I nod my head slightly, even though he can't see me.

We are silent for a moment, the only sounds in the room my soft humming and his laboured breathing. I wonder at that; he doesn't need to breathe, but he always does. When he gets angry, he breathes hard and fast; his breath hitches when he's upset; he hisses in a gasp when I get closer than I should. But I never really noticed until now how very human that makes him seem. Maybe that's why I've never really been scared of him.

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><p>He twists his body slightly, groaning. "This is even more pitiful than I thought."<p>

I remember what Stefan told me to tell him. "There's still hope." I want him to believe this; I need him to start fighting this.

"I have made a lot of choices that have gotten me here." He says contemplatively. "I deserves this. I deserve to die."

He says this with such acceptance and understanding that I can't bear it. I scoot down the bed so I can look in his eyes. "No. You don't." I need him to look at me so that he can see the truth written on my face.

"He smiles slightly. "I do Elena, and it's okay. 'Cause if I had chosen differently I wouldn't have met you." I stare at him. How could meeting me possibly make up for all the pain he has suffered over the decades? "I'm so sorry. I've done so many things to hurt you."

The guilt from not letting him apologise this morning hits me again, and I shift slightly, needing him to see that I'm being open and honest. "It's okay. I forgive you." I'm not just forgiving him now. I've already forgiven him, for everything. It doesn't matter what he does. I'll always forgive him.

"I know you love Stefan, and it'll always be Stefan." The reminder of what I said to him that night makes me feel uncomfortable, and I can no longer look at him. Somewhere deep inside of me there is a need to refute it, to say that I didn't mean it. I don't know why I want to say this, so I don't. Instead, I snuggle down into his arms, reaching out and holding his hand on his chest, trying not to notice the thread note in his voice, or the way his ribs rise and fall so shakily. "But I love you. You should know that."

The tears start now. Stefan had told me, up on the mountain, how Damon feels about me, and I hadn't really been surprised. I would have had to have been blind not to notice the fire in his eyes that brightens only when he looks at me. On some level, I have known ever since the night they both rescued me from Elijah. I don't know why it hit me that night in particular.

I try to hold back the tears, because he needs my strength. I nod, and say, "I do."

"You should have met me in 1864." His voice is getting weaker. "You would have liked me."

I raise my head to look at him. Does he really think that? Does he really think that people don't like him now? That I don't like him now? "I like you now," I say, squeezing his fingers to make my point. "Just the way you are." And it's true. Everything about him is perfect. The sarcasm, the flirty comments, the eye thing he does. Everything is just right, and I couldn't imagine my Damon being anything different. I certainly can't imagining liking it more.

His eyelids flutter shut, and I panic slightly. I can't have him thinking I don't like him. Even if he is going to get better soon, the sheer vulnerability of him is breaking my heart, and the fact that he truly doesn't seem to think that he's liked is more than I can bear. So I decide to show him how much I like him, because actions have always meant more to my Damon than words.

I lean forward and kiss him. He's too weak to even respond, but it still doesn't stop the tingles that shoot from my lips all the way down to my toes. Suddenly I wish I had done this earlier in the day, no, earlier in our relationship. Because I need this. I need to kiss him and feel him kissing me back, I need him to know that this means something to me.

His eyes flutter, but stay closed. "Thank you," he breathes out, so quiet I can barely hear him.

I don't know what to say to that. I'm not even sure what he's saying thank you for. For the kiss? For staying with him? For telling him I like him? None of those things need thanking. I laugh slightly in my confusion, and say, "You're welcome."

He breathes out a long rattling breath, and I wait, my hand resting on his chest, for him to breathe in again. I think maybe he's fallen asleep. I haven't spent enough time with him while he sleeps, so I don't know if he continues to breathe while sleeping. Maybe he only continues with pointless respiration when he's conscious? I wait longer, my brain screaming something that I can't understand, because I _don't_ understand what's happening.

After a while, I can't take it anymore, and I sit up, grabbing his hand and shaking it.

He doesn't respond.

I place my hand on his cheek, lifting his face from the pillow, trying to wake him up.

No response.

"Damon?" I whisper, trying to lift his eyelids to see those blue orbs staring back at me.

"Damon!" I shout, grabbing his shoulders and shaking them violently.

Still nothing.

I don't understand. I press my ear to his chest, while grabbing his wrist with my hand, trying to feel for a heartbeat. It's ridiculous, because he doesn't have a heartbeat, but I can't seem to make myself stop.

"No!" I scream, unable to comprehend what is happening. There are no tears now. Because this doesn't make sense. Damon can't be dead. He's my constant, the thorn in my side that reminds me that I'm still alive.

I'm straddling him now, my head still on his chest, one hand at his neck, the other holding his limp, lifeless hand. I close my eyes against the sheer impossibility of the situation.

"Please," I whisper against his shirt. "Please, don't leave me. I need you. Please."

The world around me is dark. There is no sound, no light, nothing. There will never be anything again. Damon is gone.

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><p><strong>AN: Yep, Damon dies, but that doesn't mean there will be no DE, because there definitely will be. Please, tell me what you think, and if you're interested to read more?**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I'm putting this next chapter up quickly, because the first was just the prologue, using all the lines from the show, and this is the first real chapter. I'm so happy you think this might be a story you are interested in, my brain certainly is, it seriously won't leave it alone! This is going to be a very angsty story, so you may want to grab a box of tissues, just in case. I cried while writing it, although I have to admit I am a bit of a sap - I cry at my kids' tv shows, like, daily LOL! Anyway, here is the first proper chapter, and I hope you like it :)**

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><p><strong><em>Denial: Disbelief in the existence or reality of a thing; refusal to recognise or acknowledge the truth.<em>**

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><p>I don't know how long I lie there. My eyes are clenched tightly shut, waiting for the moment when he will wake up and make some lewd comment about how my body is plastered over his. The room is silent, the only sound my own heartbeat. I stay where I am, because he needs to be able to hear that, so that he can find his way back to me. I need him to find his way back.<p>

Because that is all this is. Damon isn't dead, he can't be. This is some weird vampire coma he's in, that's all. After all, we never saw the very end with Rose, Damon staked her to take the pain away before it ever got to that point. So maybe she wouldn't have died either. Maybe that had been a mistake. My heart clenches at what Damon will think when he wakes up. He'll blame himself, because he should have waited. We shouldn't have taken the whole myth surrounding werewolf bites so seriously. I think of all the ways that he will hurt himself for not giving Rose the chance to recover, and I resolve to be there for him, every step of the way. No matter how hard he tries to push me away, this time I will be there for him.

I'm still laying there, my legs wrapped around him, my head on his chest and my hand clutching his, when I hear footsteps behind me. I know who is there, but I still don't open my eyes.

"You're late," I say quietly. "The cure had better work. He's in a really bad way."

The bed depresses slightly next to me, and I feel a hand stroke my hair. A quiet sob echoes through the otherwise silent room.

"Don't just sit there Stefan," I sigh, irritated that he seems to be moving too slowly. Can't he see the state his brother is in? "Give him the cure, now."

"There isn't one." Stefan's voice is barely above a whisper. "I couldn't find Klaus. He'd already left." His sentence ends on another choked sob.

"Then we need to find something else," I say, stroking Damon's cheek with my thumb soothingly, telling him with my actions that it's going to be okay. "Call Bonnie, maybe she can think of something."

"Elena," Stefan moves his hand from my hair to my shoulder, and pulls gently. "It's too late, he's... he's gone."

Does he think I'm stupid? I know Klaus is gone, I heard him say that less than a minute ago.

"That's why I said to call Bonnie," I say with exaggerated patience. He's obviously having trouble concentrating. "Maybe she can do a locator spell or something. He can't have gone far. And Damon needs whatever cure Klaus has."

Stefan's pulling on my shoulder gets more insistent, and I get close to losing my temper.

"I'm staying here, Stefan. I promised him I would be here until the end. I'm not going to break that promise." I clutch Damon's hand tighter and pull my shoulder out of Stefan's grasp.

"Elena..." I feel Stefan's fingers fluttering over my face. "Elena, please, look at me."

"I can't."

"Elena?"

I shake my head slightly, because I can't do what he asks. If I open my eyes, I'm going to see the defeat written all over his face, and I know I won't be able to handle that. This is his brother, he is supposed to keep fighting for him, not give up.

He is quiet for a moment, and then I hear him sigh softly. "I'm going to go call Bonnie."

_Finally_, I think. She will know what to do. And if she doesn't, maybe one of her ancestors will. Relieved that Stefan is actually trying to help now, I snuggle closer to Damon, letting my heartbeat fill the empty space inside his chest. I concentrate on taking slow, deep breaths. Until he is conscious again, I will breathe enough for both of us.

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><p>I may have drifted off, because I suddenly become aware of voices in the hallway. I hear Alaric, and I am glad he's here. Damon needs people who are on his side right now.<p>

"She won't let go of him."

"Have you tried talking to her?"

"How long has she been like that?"

"She won't talk to me. A few hours, I think."

Are they talking about me? I don't understand; they should be discussing what to do to save Damon, not wondering how long I've been here. I don't matter. Why don't any of them understand that?

"'Lena?" Bonnie's voice is closer to me now, as she leans over the bed. "Sweetie? We need you to sit up now, okay?"

Why is she talking to me like I'm a child? And do they need me to sit up so they can see to Damon? I stay where I am, trying to work it all through in my head.

"Stefan, you're going to have to move her," Alaric says, his voice thick with emotion. He can obviously see how bad Damon is.

A pair of hands suddenly glides beneath me, and before I can even think to protest, strong arms pick me up and carry me across the room. It startles me, and my eyes finally open.

As soon as I can see, I start to struggle in Stefan's arms. He puts me down, frightened that he may hurt me if he holds on too tightly. My legs wobble as my feet touch the ground, and I look towards the bed, my eyes wide with horror.

"No!" I scream at Alaric, who jumps at the sudden noise. "What are you doing?" I pull out of Stefan's embrace and stumble back over to the bed, ripping the sheet that Alaric had just placed off of Damon's face. I pull the sheet right off the bed and hurl it over my shoulder, my gaze fierce as I stare at Alaric, furious that he could do such a thing.

Bonnie approaches me, her hands held up in front of her like I'm a crazy wild animal that could attack her at any moment. Hysterical laughter bubbles up my throat at the thought of what Damon would say if he was awake to see this.

"Come on, sweetie, I'm going to drive you home now." Bonnie tries to put her arms around me, and I stumble back.

"I'm not going anywhere!" I shout, staring at each of them in turn. "We need to save him! What the hell is wrong with you all?"

Bonnie shoots a meaningful look at Stefan, and before I can dodge out of the way, his arms come around me again. I try to struggle, but his grip is like a vice, and I can't do more than strain against him. Bonnie comes up close and puts her hands on either side of my head.

"I'm sorry 'Lena," she whispers, as she closes her eyes and starts mumbling under her breath.

"No!" I shout, looking over to the bed, to where Damon is still unconscious. "He needs our help! He's not dead! Look at him! Look! There aren't any veins, he's not dead!"

Alaric frowns as I point this out, and he looks down at Damon. I am elated for a moment, because I think I may have finally got through to one of them, but before I can revel in my triumph, darkness descends over me.

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><p>It's the height of summer, and I'm walking through the trees, grateful for the reprieve from the burning sun. The light filters down through the leaves, dappling the ground into different hues of green and yellow. It's so beautiful and peaceful. My footsteps make a quiet squishing sound as I step on the moss surrounding the tree roots. I can hear the faint chirping of birds from high up in the trees, and the occasional scuffle as the woodland creatures scamper away from my path. The woods open up before me, and suddenly I am standing by the falls, the spray gently bathing my face. I move out into the open, the cool water keeping me from feeling too hot in the bright afternoon sun. My white sundress flutter slightly in the breeze created by the waterfall, tendrils of hair falling out of the messy bun on the top of my head, tickling my neck.<p>

I lean against the wooden fence surrounding the water and smile widely.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" The velvety voice comes from right next to me.

I nod, not taking my eyes from the churning waters below me. "I love it here." I say.

"I used to love it too."

My smile dims slightly at his use of the past tense. "When you were human, you mean?"

His voice is gentle. "Yes. I loved it here when I was human."

"We should come here more often. Just the two of us," I say, sighing contentedly.

"I would follow you anywhere, Elena," he says, sliding his palm across the back of my shoulders, his fingers lingering at my neck.

I lean into his touch, my hands finding his as we lean against the railing. I entwine our fingers together and we both stand there, looking down at the water. Something about his hand feels different. I look down, and notice that he isn't wearing his lapis lazuli ring.

My heart jumps into my throat. "Damon, where's your ring? We need to get you out of the sun."

"The sun doesn't bother me anymore, Elena."

I turn to face him finally, and am surprised by what I see. He is wearing pale blue jeans and a white t-shirt. His feet are bare. But that's not what surprises me, although I have only ever known him to wear dark coloured clothes. I am surprised by how he looks. His face seems younger, calmer. There is a kind of innocence about him suddenly, a carefree sense that I have never known him to possess before. It's as though someone has come along and lifted off his shoulders the many burdens that he normally carries. It makes my heart soar just looking at him. He looks so peaceful.

"I don't understand. Why aren't you burning in the sun?"

He cocks his head to one side, his cerulean blue eyes glittering. "You know why, Elena."

His words resonate with something in my mind, but it's buried too deep for me to make sense of it. "I don't," I say, shaking my head.

He observes me for a moment, his gaze tripping up and down my face, before a sad smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. "Maybe you don't," he says quietly. "You'll know soon enough."

I want to know what he's talking about, but something inside me stops me from asking the questions. Instead, I wrap my arms around his waist, resting my head against his chest. His arms come up around me, and he rests his chin on my head, slowly stroking my hair.

"I have to go soon," he says, after we have been standing there for a while.

"Why? You got somewhere else you'd rather be?" I ask him teasingly.

He laughs quietly. "There is nowhere else in the world I would ever want to be. You should know that by now."

"Well I'm not ready to go yet," I reply, snuggling closer to him, bathing in the warmth of his skin. And that's when I feel it. His heart is beating.

I pull back slightly in shock. I stare up at him in wonder, and he leans forward, placing a chaste kiss on my forehead. I close my eyes at the contact, and hear him whisper to me.

"I wish I could stay."

And then he is gone. I open my eyes and lower my arms, feeling suddenly empty and unsure. "Damon?" I call, certain he has just run off, using his usual vampire speed.

I peer into the trees, which suddenly don't seem too inviting. Now, the tree roots look designed to trip me up; the vines and branches reaching for me as though to pull me into their dark embrace. The bright yellows and greens that had tripped pleasingly over the ground earlier now look sickly, off-putting. I can no longer hear the sounds of the birds or the animals. I turn away and look back at the water, but it's no longer there. A deep empty cavern has taken its place, the earth surrounding it dry and barren, a thin coating of grey dust. I feel cold suddenly, and I look up to find that the sky has turned a deep purple, with thunder clouds and lightning streaking across it.

"Damon!" I shout, because I'm scared. He always comes when I'm scared. My eyes flick from place to place as I turn on the spot, terror building inside of me.

"DAMON!"

* * *

><p>I feel a hand patting my face, and I sigh with relief. I had obviously fallen asleep next to Damon, and any second now he's going to make some kind of sarcastic comment about how loudly I snore. I ready my comeback, and wait for him to speak. But his voice never comes.<p>

Instead, I hear Bonnie's voice as she calls to me. "'Lena? Honey can you hear me? Are you awake?" Her voice sounds worried, and I wonder why. She's never been all that bothered by Damon's problems before. This scares me slightly.

I open my eyes, and immediately frown. I'm not at the Boarding House anymore. I'm in my room, laying in my bed, Bonnie sitting next to me.

"What's going on? Why am I here?" My throat is dry and raw, and my voice comes out in a rasp. Bonnie hands me a glass of water, and I drink gratefully.

"You've been asleep," she says quietly. "For almost a day."

A day? How was that possible? "Where's Damon?" I ask, sitting up suddenly, the room starting to spin in front of my eyes. I grab Bonnie's hand, shaking her slightly, needing her to tell me what is going on.

Bonnie looks at me, and as the room slows down, I see tears glistening in her eyes. I watch as she takes a deep breath, my eyes tracking her movements as she reaches out to touch my arm.

"Damon's gone, Elena."

I don't react. Not even a blink. Because I'm waiting for her to finish her sentence. Waiting for her to tell me that he brought me here, placed me in bed and went off for something to drink at the Grill.

She looks back at me, and then her face crumples, a tear sliding down her cheek. "He's dead. I'm so sorry, Elena."

I look at her for a moment. "And I thought Caroline was the melodramatic one," I say, and I smile slightly. Bonnie had obviously seen the bad state Damon was in and just assumed the worst. "He's going to be fine." I place my hand over hers and squeeze reassuringly. "We just need to find something to wake him up, that's all." I don't quite understand why she seems to be taking this so hard, but if an almost-deadly werewolf bite is what it takes to get rid of the animosity between these two, then I'm almost glad it happened.

Bonnie just shakes her head at me, then turns towards the door. And that's when I notice Alaric and Jeremy standing in the hallway. They seem tense, on edge, staring at me as though waiting for me to bolt out of the room.

My gaze hardens as my eyes settle on Alaric, remembering what he tried to do in Damon's room. "Where is he?" My voice is as sharp and serrated as a blade, and I see him flinch as though my words had actually cut him.

He doesn't answer, just signals with his head to Bonnie, and she gets up from the bed.

"I'll be back in a minute, okay?" She looks almost afraid of me, and I'm confused.

I sit for a moment, listening to the sound of their footsteps as they go downstairs. I wait, counting to a hundred, before slipping out from under the covers and tiptoeing towards the door. Holding my shoes in my hand, I ease the door open and silently descend the stairs. I don't know what's wrong with them, or what they think might be wrong with me, but right now that doesn't matter. What matters is getting back to Damon. I promised him I wouldn't leave.

I pause at the front door, waiting for the sound of voices to cover the noise of the lock clicking open.

"She doesn't seem to understand. It's like she has some kind of mental block about it." Alaric says.

"We have to do something!" Bonnie.

"What can we do? We've tried telling her, but she just refuses to hear it." Alaric again.

Well we have to think of something. Maybe I can find a spell."

"I don't think anything supernatural is going to help here, Bonnie. I think she may need professional help."

"Yeah, that's going to be easy to do. "Hey, doc, my sister is freaking out over the fact that her vampire boyfriend's vampire brother just died from a werewolf bite, can you help her?"" Jeremy snorts. "Somehow, I don't think that'll go down too well."

"I still think that maybe –"

"She's just grieving, Bonnie. Think about everything she's gone through recently. All the people she's lost. That _we've_ lost. We need to give her time. She's just having a bit of trouble accepting the fact that Damon's dead."

"He is _not_ dead!" I burst out from my position in the hallway, and then I slap my hand over my mouth. I yank on the door handle, but they are all there before I have time to step outside.

"Elena stop!" Bonnie calls me back, pain evident in her voice. "Please just... listen to us for a minute."

I turn to face them, keeping the open door to my back, in case they try to make me go upstairs again. Alaric's phone buzzes through the silence, and he pulls it out of his pocket, his gaze flicking up to me.

"This might do it," he mumbles to Bonnie and Jeremy, before looking back at me. "Stefan's ready for us."

My eyes light up. Stefan must have found a cure. "Well what are we waiting for?" I say, and leave the house, taking the porch steps at a run.

* * *

><p>Alaric drives us – my jeep is still at the Boarding House from when I arrived there looking for Damon – and I am confused when he doesn't take the turning for their home.<p>

"Where are we going?" I ask, wondering why they would have moved Damon, when he was clearly so sick.

"Here," Alaric replies gruffly, the car suddenly veering off down an overgrown path I have only ever gone down once before in my life.

My confusion only grows as I see Stefan's car parked in a clearing slightly ahead of us. Alaric pulls up next to him, and I get out, staring around me. This was where I learned how old Stefan was. This was where he had hidden Damon's ring when he thought his brother might be a danger to me. This was where Damon grew up.

Nothing of the old house still remains, except a few bits of rubble, strewn across what I assume must have been a wide gravel entrance way. I listen hard, but there is nothing. Not even the sounds of birds in the trees. I shiver slightly, remembering my dream.

Alaric puts his hand on my elbow and guides me through the weeds and lumps of brick, around to where the back of the house must once have stood. I'm not really paying attention to where he is taking me. My mind is too busy trying to work out a way for me to run back to the Boarding House to find Damon.

"Elena." Stefan says my name as a sigh, and I glance up at him. His green eyes are red and slightly puffy, as though he has been crying. He looks like he hasn't slept for a week. He's wearing different clothes than the last time I saw him; a dark shirt and dark pants. I wonder when he found the time to change, when he should be looking for the cure.

Frowning, I look past him, and that's when I notice where we are. We are standing outside the Salvatore family crypt. I balk, try to dig my heels into the ground. What are we doing here?

"Elena?"

I turn, and see Caroline and Tyler walking towards us. They are both dressed for a funeral, and as I look back at Jeremy, Bonnie and Alaric, I notice that they are too. And then I look down at myself. I'm still wearing the same dark jeans and navy blue top that I was wearing when I was last with Damon. I smile suddenly, and then laugh out loud. Because all of a sudden, this whole thing makes sense, and the relief of being able to work it out makes me feel all giddy.

This is a dream. It has to be, because nobody would let me come to a funeral dressed like this, with blood stains still on the collar of my shirt. Somewhere else, somewhere where Damon is alive and the world makes sense, I am sleeping, and this whole thing is just one weird nightmare.

I look back at Stefan and hold out my hand, ignoring the alarmed looks everybody seems to be giving me. I can do this. I can be here and help him and watch as he buries his brother, because soon I will wake up and everything will go back to normal.

He squeezes my fingers once, and then we all step into the dark mausoleum. I glance around at the names. They are all here, except for their father, who, of course, was buried somewhere else, out of his need to hide his journal. The stone coffins line the room, all of them closed, except one.

One by one, the group go up to the side of the open coffin, mumbling a few words. I could probably hear what they are saying, but I'm not really listening. I'm too busy picturing Damon's face when I tell him about my dream.

Finally, it is Stefan's turn, and he pulls me along with him. I look down, and to my delight I see that he is wearing a suit. If he really was dead, he would be buried in his favourite dark jeans and John Varvatos t-shirt. Nobody who knew him would dress him like this to bury him. Stefan is crying quietly, but I'm not. There's no point, I think. Instead, I study his face, marvelling at how my sleeping brain has managed to capture everything about him. Even lying there with his eyes closed, his hands folded on top of his chest, the pure feline grace of him is evident. His inky black hair, resting on the white pillow, frames his pale face, his features as perfect as if they had been carved from marble. He is beautiful.

Finally, Stefan manages to choke out a few words, and we step back, Tyler and Alaric pulling the heavy stone lid down on top of Damon. We all head out into the sunlight, leaving him there. I don't really like it, but there's not much I can do about it. Any moment now, this will be over, and I will wake up from this dream.

As Stefan pulls the heavy door shut, I think I hear a sound coming from inside the crypt. It sounds like a heartbeat.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So, there we are, chapter 1. I hope you like it! *is nervous***


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thank you all for your lovely reviews. This story is full of angst, so I am glad you are enjoying it, even through your tears! If anyone is interested, the inspiration for this story came to me while listening to the song _The Mortician's Daughter_, by the Black Veil Brides. You should youtube it, a beautiful song about regret over not taking the chance at love when it was right in front of you.**

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><p><strong><em>Isolation: The failure of an individual to maintain contact with others, or genuine communication where interaction with others persists.<em>**

* * *

><p>I am sitting up on my bed, still waiting to wake up from this dream, when Stefan appears in my doorway. He leans against the door, looking at me with that familiar little frown. I don't think I can remember the last time I saw him smile, a real happy smile. I know things around us haven't been all that fantastic lately, but I'm starting to think that maybe his broodiness only makes things seem worse.<p>

"Are you okay?" He asks finally, moving further into the room. He doesn't come to the bed, instead choosing to cross to the window. As he sits down on the window seat, a bubble of fury rises up inside of me. He is not allowed to sit there; that spot is reserved for Damon. But then I remember; this is just a dream, and he's not really sitting there.

I nod my head, because I am okay, or at least I will be once I wake up. I am staring to get a bit fed up with it, to be honest. This dream seems to be going on forever. I wonder if I can pinch myself awake, but I don't try. I just sit here, my knees drawn up to my chest, leaning my chin on my arms as I wait patiently, for now anyway.

I hear footsteps in the hallway, and Alaric stops outside my door. I can tell he is looking at me, but I don't turn my head, just continue to look in the mirror on the chest of drawers opposite my bed. The girl looking back at me looks serene, calm, and peaceful. Or at least she would, if her eyes didn't look so haunted. It doesn't matter. It's just because I am tired, that's all. At least, in my dream I must be tired. My head is starting to get confused.

"Has she said anything?" Alaric asks Stefan, and I wonder why he wouldn't just talk to me. But then I shrug inwardly, because it's okay, I don't really want to talk anyway. Maybe if I don't talk, the dream will be over sooner. I need to wake up. I need to get back to Damon.

Stefan blows out a long breath and shakes his head, leaning over and covering his face with his hands. I think he's overreacting a bit. What does it matter if I don't want to speak in my own dream?

"I've made her some tea." Bonnie's voice floats over to me, and although I still don't turn my head, I track her movements as she comes into the room. She sets the cup down on the dresser next to the bed, before reaching out to me tentatively. I flinch as her fingertips come into contact with my arm; I don't really want to be touched right now.

She yanks her hand back, then sighs quietly, sitting down on the very edge of the bed. "Elena? Will you drink this for me? Please, I really think it will help."

Will it help me wake up? At first, I really don't want to drink the tea. She is a witch after all, she could have put any number of spells on the brew. But then I remember; how much could a cup of tea hurt me in my dream?

I move slowly to take the cup, and I'm aware of everybody in the room taking a collective gasp. I roll my eyes slightly, feeling them stick, as though I have gone too long without blinking. I take a few quick gulps of the lukewarm liquid, and the funny after taste tells me that my instinct was right; she had put some kind of spell on it.

Before I can do anything more than think about it though, my entire body relaxes, my knees falling to the side as my eyes flutter shut. Someone grabs the cup before I can spill it, and I feel Stefan's hands on me as he settles me into a more comfortable position.

"What was in the tea?" I hear Alaric ask, as though from far away.

"A sleeping potion. Hopefully, once she's had some proper rest, she'll be able to process it all." Bonnie's voice gets fainter and fainter, as the darkness pulls me away. I welcome it this time. Anything on the other side has to be better than this dream I'm currently stuck in.

* * *

><p>I feel the seat beneath me vibrating, and I realise that I am in a moving car. I shift slightly, the strip of bare skin between my jeans and shirt sticking to the leather seat. I moan quietly, and hear a soft chuckle next to me. I open my eyes, and find myself looking into a sea of blue.<p>

"Well, look who finally decided to join in," Damon says, taking one hand off the wheel, reaching out and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

I gasp slightly at his touch. _This _is what is real. It has to be. A simple, innocent touch like that doesn't light every nerve ending in your body on fire in a dream.

I smile widely at him, grateful that he's here, as I sit up and take a look out of the window. I don't recognise where we are, but I don't care. He is here; that is all that matters to me right now.

"Where are we going?"

"Why don't you tell me?" He grins at me, waggling his eyebrows in his flirty way, and I feel a giggle escape my throat.

"I get to choose?" I am excited. A road trip away from the craziness sounds like a fantastic idea right now. Sometimes I wish Stefan would suggest something like this, but most of the time I am glad that he doesn't. A five minute time-out from life with Damon is a much better idea.

"It's always your choice, Elena," Damon says now, his smile turning wistful.

I frown slightly at that, but I don't try to work out what he means. "Can we go to the beach?" I ask instead.

"Ooh, are you gonna skinny-dip for me?" His smirk is back, the one that he uses just for me. I wish I could keep it forever, put it in my pocket so I'll always have it with me. Everything looks better with that smirk.

"The beach it is then," I laugh, as his hand squeezes the pressure point just above my knee teasingly. I grab his hand, interlacing my fingers with his as I turn to look back out of the window. The scenery is different suddenly; I can smell the salt in the air, see the reeds as they sway gently in the breeze.

Before long, Damon pulls his car into a parking lot overlooking the sea. I stare down at the ocean for a moment, my eyes scanning the bare stretch of sand. There is nobody around for miles. I think it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

Damon gets out of the car and stretches while moving to open the trunk. I watch him pull out a blanket and a picnic basket, and I smile. So much for me making the choices. He'd obviously planned this from the very beginning. I ignore the little voice inside my head that is asking me when the beginning actually was, and step out of the car.

The breeze lifts my hair off my neck slightly as I look down at the slow, undulating waves as they slide up the darkened sand. I feel Damon come up beside me, and I grin, grabbing his hand. We look at each other for a moment, the blue of the sky making his eyes glitter, before we both take off at a run down to the beach, laughing as we trip over the dunes.

Damon sets down the blanket and the food, and I flick off my ballet flats, pulling my jeans down over my legs. Looking down, I realise that I must have anticipated this beach trip too; I am wearing black bikini bottoms. I take a quick peek under my shirt and smile. I really had come prepared. I strip off my top, leaving myself standing there in a black halter neck bikini top, and I run down to the ocean's edge.

The water is warm as it laps my feet, and I wade in deeper, my eyes closing as I feel the current pulling gently at my feet. Strong warm arms wrap around me from behind, and I lean back against Damon's bare chest. As my hands slide down his arms, I notice that he still isn't wearing his ring.

"Can you swim?" He whispers into my ear, his breath sliding over my bare shoulder, and I shiver slightly.

"Of course I can swim." I scoff at him, slapping him playfully.

"Good."

He lifts me up suddenly, before throwing me into the deeper waters. I scream in surprise, swallowing a mouthful of salt water as my face dips below the surface. I struggle under the water, trying to find a foothold to push myself back up, and I surface, spluttering. He is laughing; a real amusement filled chuckle, with not even a hint of sarcasm, and I stare at him, my eyes narrowed in mock annoyance. The hot afternoon sun is shining directly onto his pale skinned chest, making his hair seem blacker and his eyes seem bluer. He is breathtaking.

"I am so gonna get you back for that, Salvatore!"

He chuckles again. "Ooh, I am sooo scared!" He laughs, as he wades in closer to me.

I wait, biding my time, as he stalks towards me, all feline grace and litheness. Then, just as he reaches out to me, I lunge at him, wrapping my legs around his waist, using my momentum to push him backwards. He stumbles, and we fall into the waves, our limbs tangled together. I try to get away, intending to hold his head under the water, but his arms snake around my hips, holding me tightly against him. His hands travel up my sides, and before I can stop him, he is tickling my ribs. I gasp involuntarily, and more water floods into my mouth. I struggle harder, and he brings us back up to the surface, holding me against him as I try to catch my breath.

"You know," I say, still choking slightly, "Trying to drown me when I haven't even had any of our picnic isn't a very nice thing to do." I smack his chest playfully.

"You said you could swim." He shrugs, his eyes glittering with amusement. "I was just testing that theory."

He sets me down on my feet and I move away from him slightly, before turning back to him and launching a wave of water into his face. A furious water fight ensues, and by the time it is over, we are both laughing and gasping for breath. He holds his hands out in front of him in surrender, then reaches out to take my hand.

Together we wade back to the beach and sit down on the blanket, our legs entwined together as we dig our toes into the soft hot sand. Damon reaches into the basket and pulls out a bunch of grapes. He takes one and holds it out to me. I lean forward and take it between my teeth, the juice running down his thumb as I bite down through the soft flesh. My tongue snakes out to lick it, and I watch his eyes darken slightly.

He pulls his hand back and delves into the basket again, quickly pulling out my favourite foods, setting the boxes between us on the blanket. He hands me a fork, and I dive into the 'slaw, moaning my appreciation as the food hits my empty stomach.

We eat in comfortable silence, watching the birds circle and dip above the water and listening to the waves crashing down on the sand. It is so peaceful and quiet, and I don't think I ever want to leave.

Damon packs the empty boxes back into the basket, and I inch closer to him on the blanket. The sun is starting to go down now, the red-gold colours making his skin glow. He looks as though he has just received a regular human sun burn. The thought makes me giggle slightly.

"What's so funny?"

"Just how human you look right now," I say, running a fingertip up his arm, feeling the contrasting textures of soft skin over hard muscle. He doesn't reply, and I look up at him, noticing the small smile playing at his lips. "What?" I ask, a teasing laugh in my voice.

"It can't last, you know."

His words touch something inside of me, but it's buried too deep for me to grasp what it is. And I don't want to, because I don't want to lose this feeling of pure contentment that I am currently luxuriating in.

I move my hand up to his face, trailing my finger over his lips. He has such perfect lips. Without even thinking about it, I lean in and press my mouth to his.

He is unresponsive at first, and I feel a flicker of nervousness. But then he moans slightly, and his hand comes up to caress the back of my neck, his lips moving against mine. I pull him down to the blanket with me, my arms going around his neck as I tunnel my fingers through his hair. Our legs are still tangled together, and I feel his knee between my thighs.

I want this, I realise. Everything about today just feels so natural and right. There is no supernatural chaos surrounding me, there is nothing, just me and Damon on this deserted beach.

I feel his fingers undoing the strap of my halter top, his lips moving down my jaw as he inches the material down slowly, kissing each piece of new skin as it is exposed. I run my hands over his shoulder and grip him tightly, never wanting to let him go.

He flings my bikini top over his shoulder and I arch my back into him, needing to be closer, needing to feel his skin against mine. I feel his heartbeat through his chest again, but it doesn't bother me this time. I sigh as I feel his palm against my breast, biting my lip in anticipation, my eyes closed.

Suddenly, he stops, and slides his hand up my face.

"It's time for me to go." He whispers, and I hear the regret in his voice.

"What? No! Don't leave me!" I open my eyes and stare at him, tightening my arms around his neck.

"Elena," he breathes out, his cerulean blue eyes burning into mine. "You'll have to take it back soon, you know."

He kisses my lips tenderly, and I blink. When my eyes open again, he is gone.

I sit up on the blanket, looking around me hesitantly. The red-gold colours of the setting sun have turned purple and black, creating shadows in places where there shouldn't be any. I pull the blanket around my almost naked body, feeling suddenly very exposed, and I stand up.

"Damon?" I call to him, but I know he won't answer this time. "No! Don't leave me! DAMON!"

* * *

><p>My eyes open slowly, and I find I am staring at the ceiling in my bedroom. It is dark outside, the only light in my room coming from the sliver of the open bathroom door. I sit up slowly, looking around me. I expect to see Damon sitting in his spot by the window, but there is only shadows. I feel very alone.<p>

I pull the covers off me and stand up quietly. There is someplace I need to be. I grab my sneakers and head for the door, listening intently. There is only silence. Downstairs in the hallway, I am aware of Alaric breathing deeply on the couch, and I see my car keys sitting on the dresser. Someone must have driven my car back for me. I smile and clasp my hand around the keys, careful not to let them jangle. I open the door slowly, thankful it is not one of those that squeaks easily. I jump into the car and drive away before anybody can wake up and stop me.

When I pull up at the Boarding House, I start to get a bit nervous. I don't want Stefan to stop me, but I don't know how to sneak in without him hearing me. I get out of the car, pushing the door shut as quietly as I am able. I tiptoe across the gravel and up the porch steps, taking a deep breath as my hand grasps the handle. Opening the door, I lean my head in, listening for sounds of someone moving. Everything is quiet, but that doesn't mean much in a place where two vampires live.

I close the door quietly behind me and head for the stairs. When I reach the door to Stefan's room, I peek in. I smile slightly when I see his empty bed. He must be out hunting or something. Breathing a sigh of relief, I head into Damon's room.

The light is off when I open the door, and I creep over to the bed and turn the small lamp on. He is not there, but somewhere deep inside me, I didn't expect him to be. I look around the room anyway, hoping to see him step out from the bathroom. He doesn't appear.

The bed has been made since I was last here, clean sheets replacing the sweaty ones from when Damon was sick. My brain struggles as it tries to work out if I am still dreaming or not. I pick up the book at the top of the pile and look at it. _Gone With The Wind._ The presence of this book tells me I am dreaming; after all, why would he be reading this book at just the time when I had been getting ready to watch the movie? It must be my sleeping brain making weird connections.

I set the book back down – I know how particular he can be about neatness – and wander aimlessly around the room. My eyes get caught on the large dark wood wardrobe, and I drift over to it, pulling the door open. I let my fingers trail across the row of jeans and shirts hanging up, stopping when I get to his leather jacket. I pull it out, folding its buttery softness around my hands as I lift it to my face. It smells of him, as though he has just taken it off and hung it up only moments ago. The feeling is so strong that I turn and look around the room again, certain that I will see him standing there, but the space behind me is still empty. Kind of like how my chest feels right now.

I sink down to the floor in front of the open wardrobe, clutching the jacket and breathing in the sweetness of his scent. My foot nudges something at the bottom of the wardrobe, making a crackly sound. Folding the jacket onto my lap, I reach under the jeans and shirts, searching for the source of the noise. My fingers encounter something plastic, and I grab it, pulling it towards me. It is a plastic shopping bag, and there is something inside it. I reach my hand in and pull the objects out, laying them down on the floor around me. When the bag is finally empty, I look down at what I found.

There are three presents, each wrapped in crisp white paper with silver swirls embossed on it. A dark blue ribbon surrounds each one, folded neatly on top with a handmade bow, a label sticking out from under them. I pick up the smallest box and carefully lift up the label.

_Elena, Happy Birthday, Love D._

I gasp slightly as I read it, then I check the labels of the other two presents. Each one says the same thing. Returning to the smallest package, I carefully start to peel off the ribbon. It's not my birthday for another two weeks, but curiosity is building inside of me. I know he will forgive me when he finds out I looked early. Slowly I remove the paper, taking care not to rip it. It has been wrapped so perfectly. Inside is a dark red jewellery case. I flip the catch and the box opens, and I gasp again. Inside the case, nestled amongst folds of white satin, is a breathtaking bracelet. The silver filigree design intricately wraps itself around small sapphire stones, which sparkle even in the dim light of the room. I have never seen anything so beautiful.

Placing the box on top of the leather jacket, I reach for the next present, taking off the dark blue ribbon carefully. Inside, there is another jewellery case, just the right size to hold another bracelet, but when I open it, instead I find a fountain pen, a small bottle of ink resting on its side. It's clearly very old, and well taken care of, and I wonder where he could have found such a thing.

I reach out for the last parcel, the size and shape of a book. As I peel back the wrapping, the smell of old leather teases my nostrils, and an aged book falls into my lap. I pick it up, inspecting the spine and cover for a title, but the leather is bare, except for two initials embossed into the top right hand corner in cursive script. _D.S._

As I crack open the book, a piece of paper slips out from between the pages, fluttering down to rest on the floor beside me. I pick it up, and see that it is a letter, addressed to me, written in Damon's distinctive handwriting.

_Elena,_

_I know that in the time between me writing this and actually giving it to you, I will probably have done something to make you angry with me again. I know this, because I do it a lot. I want you to know though, that no matter what I have done, I am sorry. I may not say it out loud, but I feel it nonetheless. You should know that._

_The bracelet once belonged to my mother, and I know that she would have wanted you to have it. She would have liked you very much, and would have thought that you were a good match for Stefan._

_The pen is mine, a gift from Stefan that I never used._

_The journal is mine also, a present from my mother. She kept a journal all her life, just as you do, and she wished for me to do the same. She died soon after giving this to me, and I couldn't bring myself to look at it again. I hope you can find some use for it, and that knowing it came from me gives you some pleasure. At least in time._

_Happy Birthday Elena_

_Damon x._

* * *

><p>I stared down at the letter, not noticing the tears falling down my face until one drops onto the black ink, smearing the first letter of his name. I wiped it away quickly, folding the letter and placing it back inside the journal. I clasp the book tightly to my chest, wishing more than anything that his words could fill the empty space that currently resides where my heart should be. I rock back and forwards slightly, as tears drip down onto his leather jacket.<p>

Because I know now. This isn't the dream, this is reality. Damon is dead, and I am all alone. I am empty.

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><p><strong>AN: So there we go, denial phase over. As always, I hope you enjoyed it, and please review!**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Finally, here it is! The characters just were not cooperating with me this chapter, and I got very cross with them. Quite ironic, considering we are now entering the anger phase of our journey, LOL!** **I just want to reassure a couple of reviewers, that this story will of course have a Delena endgame (as will the show ;)), but how we get there is open for guesses! Thank you all for reviewing, I know this is probably emotion overload for some of you, so I appreciate every word you write!**

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><p><strong><em>Anger: An extreme emotion, conveying great annoyance and antagonism as a result of some real or imagined grievance.<em>**

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><p>I continue to rock backwards and forwards, sobbing as my grief pours out, until there is no strength left inside me and I slump to the floor. Before I land, a pair of warm, strong hands reach out to grab me, scooping me up and cradling me to his chest, continuing my rocking motion for me. One hand slowly reaches up to cup my cheek, wiping away my tears with the pad of his thumb, making comforting sounds as I sob.<p>

"You're not really here, are you?" I whisper, clenching my eyes shut, bracing for the answer I know will come.

"No," Damon says, rubbing his hand up and down my arm soothingly. "I'm not. I wish I was."

"Then why does this feel so real?" I ask, as more tears leak out from between my lashes.

"I think you have to figure that out by yourself."

He picks me up easily, still cradling me in his arms, and I have never felt so safe. He carries me over to the bed and lays me down. I'm still clutching tightly to the presents I unwrapped, but I shoot one arm out, my fingers clenching round his arm as he starts to pull away.

"Can you just... Can you just stay here with me? Just for a little while?" I don't open my eyes, because I am scared that if I do, he will disappear.

"I will do whatever you need me to do, Elena."

He lays his leather jacket over my shoulders, then lays down behind me. I move my head to rest it against his shoulder as I feel his arm come over my waist, holding me tightly. I feel his lips touch my hair, his breath on the back of my neck, and I struggle to understand how something that feels so real could all be in my head. We lay like that for a while, and I feel safe and warm and so _loved_, and I don't ever want it to end. Everything around me is silent, the only noise our breathing. I fall asleep, listening to his even breaths, feeling his arms wrapped around me, the vibrations of his heartbeat echoing through my head, calling to me.

* * *

><p>"I've found her. No, no, she's fine."<p>

The sound of someone speaking lifts me from sleep. My head is lying on a pillow, and I am curled up beneath a jacket, just how I was when I fell asleep. Only now there is no comforting arm around me, no soothing breath tickling my neck. I am alone.

"Yes, she's at the Boarding House. Will you call Stefan, and let him know? Thanks."

I realise it is Caroline who has found me, and I slowly open my eyes as she walks into the bedroom, her eyes scanning the room curiously. I don't know if she's ever been in here before. I sit up slowly, the presents in my arms falling down onto the bed, as she looks down at the mess of wrapping and ribbons at the foot of the open wardrobe. And then she turns her head to look at me, and there is such compassion there that I feel myself crumple in the face of it. Out of everyone I know, she is probably one of only two people I deserve the least sympathy from.

Tears start to fall again, and I hear Caroline make a little moan of worry as she approaches the bed. She climbs up next to me and folds her arms around me, stroking my hair as I sob into her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." I manage to choke out, trying to swallow back the sobs.

Caroline tilts my chin up to look at me, a small frown marring her perfect features. "Why are you apologising, Elena? You haven't done anything."

I try to pull my gaze away from her as shame rises up inside me, but she is stronger than she remembers, and her fingers dig into my skin, forcing me to stay still.

"It's just, I'm so upset! And I know he was horrible to you, and maybe I shouldn't be this –"

"Shh, Elena." She interrupts me, a small, sad smile on her lips. "You don't need to apologise for being upset. Was Damon mean to me?" She nods once. "Yes, he was. But did I hate him? No, I didn't. I had even started thinking of him as a friend."

"Really?" I ask. I am shocked, because he used her terribly in the beginning, back before he changed.

"How could I hate him, Elena?" Caroline smiles at me, her gaze turning wistful as her eyes glaze over, micro-reactions to memories playing across her features. "He saved my life. More than once." A tear forms and travels slowly down her cheek. "The last time got him killed, and now I'll never get the chance to thank him for that."

I wrap my arms around her and hold her close, my own tears making her hair damp.

"He was a good guy, Elena. A little broken and a lot screwed up, but he wasn't all bad. It's okay for you to be sad for him."

"I just... Oh God, I miss him so much!"

"I know."

She holds me as I cry, rocking me slightly, just as Damon had in my dream. I miss him. I feel so empty, as though someone has come along and carved out my heart. More tears fall as the irony of this hits me. I finally gave him my heart, but it was too late. Because if I look back at our time together now, it is obvious to me that I would have eventually let myself admit what I felt for him. I was so stupid, thinking that because he was a vampire, I had all the time in the world to admit my feelings. I was wrong. There is no such thing as eternity, not even for the undead.

Eventually, I cry myself out, and we break apart, Caroline keeping one arm wrapped around my shoulders as she glances down at the journal and boxes lying next to me.

"What are these?" She asks, reaching out a hand to pick up the bracelet case. "Oh, wow! This is beautiful! Where did you find it?"

I nod my head in the direction of the wardrobe, one finger tracing over the embossed initials in the leather journal.

"They were my birthday presents from him," I say, as Caroline pulls the bracelet out of the box carefully. "They were already wrapped."

"The man certainly had good taste," she says, her eyes flicking around the room, taking in the decor. "Come on then, let's see how it looks."

I hold my hand out, and she places the bracelet around my wrist, securing the clasp. It is though it was made for me, just the right size. The sapphires sparkle as the light hits them. They remind me of Damon's eyes.

I show her the pen, and she looks at it in interest, but I keep the journal to myself. I don't want to share the letter with anybody else just yet. I'm not sure I'll ever want to.

We are just picking up the pieces of ribbon – I place them inside the front cover of the book – when I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Seconds later Stefan rounds the doorway, looking frantic. He calms down when he sees me, and runs a hand through his hair.

"Elena, there you are. I was so worried." He steps towards me, enveloping me in his arms, and I feel like I am suffocating. A bubble of fury rises up my throat, and I pull away. He is always worried about me. There are times when I feel I can't have a moment to myself for fear of him becoming concerned over my whereabouts. It's beyond irritating.

"I'm fine," I say, trying to keep my voice even. "It's not like I went far, or for very long."

I step away, picking up Damon's leather jacket, smoothing the wrinkles out of the sheets on his bed. He might not be coming back, but his room should stay how he would want it. I take the pieces of wrapping paper that Caroline has folded for me, and close the wardrobe door.

Stefan sighs. "Come on, I'll drive you back home."

I bite my lip to keep myself from telling him where he can shove his generous offer, and just shake my head instead. "No need," I manage to bite out finally. "I drove here, I can drive myself back."

"I know, I just think you shouldn't be by yourself right now." His green eyes are staring at me pensively, and I am suddenly filled with the need to be as far away from him as possible.

"I'm not incompetent, Stefan. I can find my own way home." I shove my hands into the arms of Damon's jacket, a feeling of serenity washing over me as I breathe in his scent. "I just... I would like to be alone for a while, okay?"

He nods forlornly, and even that simple act is enough to make my teeth grind together. I ignore him, turning instead to Caroline and giving her a quick hug, made hard by the fact that I am still clutching all my presents to my chest.

"Thank you for understanding," I say, looking at her gratefully.

She just smiles at me, and I walk out of the room and down the stairs, without giving Stefan another glance.

* * *

><p>As I get in my car, I notice my phone sitting on the passenger seat. It gives me an idea. I drive away before I make the call, not wanting to give Stefan a reason to come down after me. As soon as I think I am far enough away, I pull over and pick up the phone.<p>

"Hey, Jer," I say when he answers.

"Elena? Where the hell have you been all this time?"

I roll my eyes. "Calm down Jer, I was at Stefan's. Caroline told you that on the phone."

"You were there the whole time?"

I grit my teeth against the questioning. "Yeah, I went to see Stefan, but he wasn't there. I guess I fell asleep waiting for him." I make a face at the lie, not because I'm lying, but because I know nobody would question it. That's the kind of thing I do for Stefan. At least, it used to be.

"And you couldn't answer your phone?"

"I must have dropped it in the car. I found it on the seat this morning."

Jeremy sighs. "Okay, fine. Just... leave a note or something next time okay?"

"I will Jer, I'm sorry."

"Are you coming home now?"

I hesitate. "Actually, there's something I want to do first." My eyes find the journal lying on the seat next to me. "But I'll be home soon, okay?"

I end the call before he can protest, and start the car again, driving to the older part of town. The sun is high in the sky by the time I stop and get out, telling me that I'd slept away the better part of the morning. Still wearing Damon's leather jacket, I grab the journal and the pen box, and head out. My feet take me on the familiar path, the one I always used to take on my way home from school, before my life erupted in chaos around me. I can hardly believe I was here just a few days ago, saying goodbye to somebody else. I walk slowly, taking my time, enjoying the feel of the cool inner lining of the jacket on my bare arms, in contrast with the hot sun warming my face. It reminds me of Damon, the coolness of his skin, against the fire that burns out of his eyes. Burned.

Finally, I come upon the place where I always used to sit. The roses we had placed a few days ago still lie there, looking shrivelled now, from the sun. Reminding myself to come back with some fresh flowers sometime soon, I gather the stems together, wincing as a thorn pushes into my thumb. Sucking at the small pinprick of blood, I place the flowers in a bunch beside the graves, and settle down between them all, crossing my legs and placing the journal on my lap. I put the pen box down next to me and open it up, carefully removing the fountain pen from its resting place. Damon gave this journal to me, so I am going to use it to record all of my memories and feelings for him.

I pull the ribbons and letter out from under the front cover, putting them in a pocket in Damon's jacket for safe keeping. Uncapping the pen, I turn the first page, and come across an inscription in a unfamiliar hand.

_To my darling boy,_

_I give this journal to you on your birthday, and I want you to promise me that you will try your very best to use it. People like us need an outlet for our emotions, they are too strong to keep them locked within us._

_I want you to use this whenever you are feeling overwhelmed by your passions, whatever they may be. Use it, whenever I am not here for you to vent your frustrations on me._

_I love you Damon. With all my heart._

_Mama._

My eyes tear up at the beautiful inscription, as its message resonates with a similar experience of my own. I remember the day my mother gave me my very first journal, pleading with me to use it to record my stories, telling me my imagination would one day get me into trouble.

I wonder if Damon ever had the chance to use it, and I turn the pages, searching. On the very first page, there is an entry, written in an almost illegible script.

_November 2__nd__, 1851_

_Today is my twelfth birthday. I am almost a man now. Mother has given me this journal as a present, and I shall have to remember to keep it high up, because if Stefan finds it, he would certainly rip it to shreds. I'm not sure I shall have much use for it, writing seems to be a waste of time, if you ask me. I shall keep my promise and try though._

_Mother seemed to be worse today. Her coughing fits are lasting longer, and she needs more time to recuperate afterwards. I asked father about it, but he just shook his head and walked away. I hope she will get better soon. Christmas is not far away, and it is her favourite time of year._

_Stefan dug his fingers in the icing of my cake today, before I even had a chance to look at it. I didn't really mind, because he looked as though he enjoyed it, but it would have been nice to have seen it without all the finger marks in it. Mother gave him a smaller piece than me, telling me that it was his punishment, but I think it was more because he had already eaten too much._

_I have to go to bed now. Mother has promised that she will try to take me out to the quarry tomorrow, as she was too ill to be able to do it today. I hope she will be well enough._

My fingers slide under the words as I try to make them out. The dried ink shows signs of a rushed hand, and I can imagine a young blue eyed boy scribbling away furiously, trying to honour his mother's wishes. I turn the page carefully, seeing yet another entry, dated a week later. I keep turning, until I find the very last entry, and I gasp at the words written there.

_December 22__nd__, 1851_

_Mama died today..._

I flicked through the rest of the journal's pages, but there was nothing else written inside it. He had told the truth in his letter to me. He hadn't written in it after she died.

I put the cap back on the pen and place it back in the box. I don't really feel like writing anymore. My mind is filled up with Damon's words, and I don't want to forget them yet. I look up at the trees swaying in the gentle breeze, and my gaze snags on the marble angel statue across from me. I remember when it used to scare me, but now it seems to fill me with serenity, as though it holds some sort of significance for me now. I can't think why that is, but I don't think about it too hard. Instead, I stand up, whisper a quiet goodbye to my family, and head back to the car. I am suddenly so tired.

* * *

><p>The sun is setting as I pull up outside my house. I hadn't realised how long I had sat in the graveyard. As I step through the door into the hallway, the smell of take-out food hits me.<p>

"Elena?" Alaric leans out from the living room, a Chinese carton with a fork sticking out in his hand. "There's dinner in the kitchen if you want some."

I smile at him. I think it's nice how he seems to have adopted both Jeremy and me; he's been practically living on the couch recently. Or maybe we adopted him. "Actually, i think I'm just going to take a shower and go to bed. I've got a bit of a headache." I haven't, I just really want to sleep. Because if I do, I might have another dream.

"Have you eaten anything today?" His voice is light, but he is looking at me shrewdly, as though he is waiting to catch me in a lie.

I shake my head. "My stomach has been feeling a little off today. I'll try something in the morning." I give him a little wave, and head towards the stairs, still holding the journal and pen box. As I step in through my doorway, a notice a figure standing by the window. I jump slightly, a smile ready to grace my lips as I look into his blue eyes, but when I flick on the light switch, I realise my mistake. The eyes are not blue, they are green.

Stefan is sitting in the window seat, his elbows leaning on his knees. He has obviously been waiting for me to come home.

I sigh as I walk over to the bed, putting down the things in my arms and shrugging out of Damon's jacket. I notice Stefan's eyes tracking the jacket as I lay it down carefully on the bed, a frown on his face, and I scowl, annoyed.

"What do you want, Stefan?" I ask, my tone clipped.

"I wanted to make sure you got home alright. You were gone a long time."

I can't look at him right now, especially where he is sitting. I want him to move. I want him to get up and walk away from the spot that doesn't belong to him, and I want him to do it without me having to ask him to. That is Damon's place, and he should know this by now.

"I told you I needed some time alone, didn't I?" Out of the corner of my eye, I see his frown deepen, and I press my lips together in an effort to keep the sudden rage from pouring out in a torrent.

I know you did, but I was worried about you." He is using that kicked-puppy voice he always uses when he thinks I'm being unfair. My teeth start grinding together.

"If I tell you I need time alone, I expect you to give me that, Stefan." I spit out, annoyed beyond belief that he can't just leave me alone. I want to go to sleep.

Stefan stands up, moving closer to me. He reaches out a hand, but I step away before he can touch me. He sighs, dropping his hand as he glances down at the bed. I watch as he notices the journal, and he stretches out his arm to pick it up.

"Don't touch it!" I yell, snatching the book out of his reach and clasping it tight to my chest, my fingertip finding the initials, rubbing over them.

Stefan's eyes widen, and he stumbles back a step, acting as though I just slapped him. "Elena, I'm worried about you. I just want you to talk to me."

His placating tone only serves to infuriate me further, and I lose the last remaining hold on my temper. "And I told you I wanted to be alone! What are you gonna do, stalk me for a few months like you did before we met?"

His back straightens suddenly, and I know that what I said hurt him, but I don't care. I want him to go. I want him to leave me alone so I can go to sleep and dream about Damon again. I am fast beginning to lose my grip on my sanity, and I know that that is the only thing that will help me right now.

"Okay." Stefan sighs again, the sound itching up my back, ratcheting my annoyance up another notch. "Okay, I'll leave you alone." He heads back towards the window.

"No," I blurt out. That is how Damon exits my room. He turns back to me, his face brightening for a second, before falling again when I add, "You can use the front door."

He nods and walks to the door, pausing when he is level with me. "Can I call you tomorrow?"

I roll my eyes, not really caring whether he sees. "How about I call you?"

* * *

><p>I can hear the fire crackling as I step into the cavernous living room at the Boarding House. I smell cheese on toast and hot chocolate, and I look down, seeing my supper spread out on the coffee table, which has been pulled close to one of the sofas.<p>

"You're late," Damon says, closing the book he had been reading, keeping his place with his finger between the pages.

"I know. I'm sorry," I say as I slump down next to him, resting my arm along his thigh.

"You're here now, that's all that matters." I watch as he makes a note of his page number, before setting the book down and picking up the plate of cheesy goodness. "Hungry?"

"Starving," I nod, smiling as he picks up a slice and holds it up to my mouth. I take a huge bite, my teeth sliding across the pad of his finger, and he hisses.

"Greedy," he teases, putting the rest of the toast in his own mouth. "What?" He asks with a laugh, as he notices my amazed expression.

"Nothing," I say, feeling slightly embarrassed. Then I sigh. "I just... it always amazes me that you eat regular human food. Stefan hardly ever does."

"Melted cheese and burgers with pickles are too unhealthy for Stefan to indulge in," he says with a smile. "You might find him occasionally chowing down on a salad. Although," his smile turns into a smirk, "He probably gets enough of a lettuce fix by eating all those bunnies."

I laugh, and he shoves another piece of toast into my open mouth. I smack his arm as I manfully try to chew and swallow the food, and he pats my back as I cough slightly. He leans forward and picks up a steaming mug of hot chocolate, placing it in my hands. I slurp up a half melted marshmallow, and lean back, sighing contentedly.

"You have marshmallow on your lips."

I lick my lips slowly with my tongue, enjoying the way his eyes darken as he tracks the movement.

Damon watches me for a moment, before pulling the mug out of my hand and placing it back on the table.

"Hey! I was enjoying that!"

"I know, but you didn't quite get it all off." He leans towards me and whispers, "Here, let me help."

His breath whispers across my face, and I part my lips slightly. Damon closes the gap between us, snaking his tongue out as he slowly licks the marshmallow from the edge of my mouth. He moans slightly.

"Taste good?" I whisper, closing my eyes.

"Like you wouldn't believe."

And then I can't take it anymore, and I kiss him. I grab his collar, pulling him to me, feeling his hand at the small of my back, cupping me tightly to him. Without breaking the kiss, I climb into him, onto him, over him. I push him back against the cushions, climbing onto his lap, tunnelling my fingers into his hair.

"Elena," he whispers hoarsely, and then suddenly I'm on my back, his weight leaning into me. "I have to go."

"No." I hold onto him tightly, wrapping my legs around his waist, feeling his arousal pressing against me, listening to his heartbeat pumping steadily against his ribs. "Stay here with me. I want to be here with you, forever."

"I wish I could," he replies, trailing his lips down my jaw to my collar bone. "But you're going to wake up soon."

"No I'm not." I gasp out, arching my back against his touch.

He chuckles slightly, and our eyes meet. "You are the most stubborn woman I have ever come across, Elena Gilbert."

I blink, and in that moment I feel the weight of him disappear. I sit up slowly on the couch, looking around me. The fire has gone out, and the room is cold. There is a layer of dust on the floor and furniture. The darkened windows rattle as thunder peals outside. But I'm not scared this time, because I know what this part of the dream signifies.

I am about to wake up, and go back into reality, where everything is lifeless and empty.

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><p><strong>AN: So there we are! As always, I hope you enjoyed it, and please review!**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: So, I _may_ have used Elena in this chapter as a sort of cathartic release over my own frustrations with some characters (sorry about that), but I'm hoping that she comes across as close to in character as possible for you. I guess I shall have to wait for your reviews to see if I managed it!**

**Also, this will be the last chapter until after Christmas; I have been a bad mum recently, not a single present is even wrapped yet! So consider this my present to all of you, for being so kind to me and reviewing my story! I hope you like it, and Happy Holidays, everyone! xx**

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><p><strong><em>Frustration: a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unfulfilled needs.<em>**

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><p>It has been seventeen days since my first argument with Stefan. Seventeen days of dodging him in the hallways at school. Seventeen days of ignoring his text messages and sending his calls straight to voicemail. Seventeen days of pretending I don't see him loitering across the street from my house whenever I look out a window. I have tried to get through to him, subtly at first, telling him I just need some time to work some things out. Then I tried being blunt, telling him that acting like a stalker was creepy and weird, and that if I'd known from the beginning that this was what he used to do, I would have run screaming in the other direction. It doesn't seem to matter what I say or do, he continues to hang around me, and it's beyond irritating. This is not what I call 'giving me space'. This is what I call smothering. When I look back over our relationship, I realise that he tends to do this a lot. He coddles me, treats me like a fragile doll, never letting me have even the simplest of emotions, for fear that I will do some damage to myself. Maybe I am becoming blinded by the pure fury that wells up inside me every time I set eyes on him, but I'm starting to think our relationship wasn't as great as I'd once believed it to be.<p>

Putting aside my list of many issues with Stefan however, I have managed to settle myself into a sort of routine. I wake up, go through the motions at school, and then visit the graveyard, where I write in Damon's journal and spend time with the statue that has recently begun to feel like my guardian angel of sorts. I know the angel isn't really _my_ guardian angel – _he_ is tucked safely away inside his family crypt – but I feel closer to him whenever I look at the statue. Then, I walk home slowly, waiting for that tired feeling to wash over me, telling me it is time for me to go to sleep and visit Damon again.

We have been everywhere in my dreams together. We have sailed across the ocean in a huge sailboat; we have tucked ourselves up in bed and watched old movies, throwing popcorn at each other; we have gone out to eat in an expensive Italian restaurant; Damon has given me cooking lessons, while I stand there and pretend to learn, while really just watching the muscles in his arms stretch and contract as he works. We have hugged and kissed, and fallen asleep in each other's arms. We have slowly stripped away every article of clothing from each other, running our lips across each and every inch of uncovered skin. But that is always where the dreams end, and I'm not sure why that is. All I know is that I wake up every morning feeling a little frustrated.

The frustration only serves to fuel my anger, which I am starting to find hard to control. It is always there, just beneath the surface, ready to break free and lunge at people for the simplest of reasons. I am angry at Alaric when he tries to force food down my throat in the evenings. I am angry at Jeremy when he wakes me from my time spent with Damon, which he has done on more than one occasion. I am angry with Bonnie for not seeming to care about what happened. I am angry at Caroline and Tyler, for being kidnapped in the first place, putting Damon in harm's way, and for being happy together now. I am furious with Stefan whenever I see him, for not trying harder to help his brother, and for not coming back with the cure like he said he would. And sometimes, sometimes, I am angry with Damon too, for not fighting harder to stay with me. We argue sometimes in my dreams, stepping closer and closer to each other in our anger, until all I can see is an ocean of blue. And then I kiss him, and our anger turns into a passion so bright I think that it could burn us both. There is one thing I have noticed about my dreams; it is always me that makes the first move. I am always the one to close the gap between us. It is as though Damon is waiting for something, but I am not sure what it is.

"What do you think? Elena?"

"Hmm?" I am sitting in English class, my chin resting on one hand, the fingertips of the other running over the corner of Damon's journal as I stare out of the window. I turn around at the sound of my name being spoken, and notice that class is over and people are packing up their things. I realise I haven't listened to a single thing anyone has said for the entire morning. I shrug inwardly, because I don't care. Nothing here matters anymore.

"You weren't listening to me at all, were you?" Bonnie huffs, narrowing her eyes at me.

I would say that I'm sorry, but I'm not. I want to tell her to stop being such a b... witch. I smile slightly as my mind runs through the list of names Damon has just for her.

"And you're still not listening now!" Bonnie makes a disgusted sound at me. "For God's sake, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"Bonnie!" Caroline says in a warning tone.

"No, Caroline!" Bonnie holds up her hand. "This has gone on for long enough! Elena, do you _need_ me to write down a list of all the terrible things Damon did, to refresh your memory about what a dick he was?"

"Go ahead!" I retort, the anger that is always simmering just below the surface bubbling over quickly. "And when you're done, we can go over the list of your many mistakes!"

"Okay, I am so not gonna stick around for this!" Caroline picks up her bag and runs out of the door, leaving the two of us in the room on our own.

"I can't believe you're still thinking about him! After what he did to Caroline?" Bonnie's eyes are flashing with anger, and I'm betting mine are too.

"What about what you did to Caroline?" I say, taking a step towards her.

Her brow furrows in confusion. "Me? I haven't done anything to her!"

"No? So, you didn't pretend to de-spell the device that caused Tyler to crash the car he was driving? She didn't end up in the hospital because of that, needing Damon's blood to heal her, which was how she ended up being turned into a vampire in the first place? And you didn't shun her afterwards, refusing to be her friend just because of something that happened to her that wasn't her fault?" I shout these accusations at her, spitting them out one after another before she has a chance to try and refute them.

Bonnie splutters for a moment, before blurting out, "He attacked me! He tried to kill me!"

"If he'd wanted to kill you, you would be dead already," I say scathingly. "Besides, he wasn't trying to kill you, he was just angry because of what _your_ ancestor did to him."

Bonnie's eyes widen. "He turned Vicki! She attacked you and Jeremy because of him!"

"Yes he did." I agree. "And do you know what he did after that? He came to my house and offered to help make it better. He took away Jeremy's pain, all of it, not just from that night with Vicki, but _all of it._ Damon is the reason he stopped taking drugs."

"And what about when he snapped Jeremy's neck? Did that help him too?" She is shaking slightly, but I can't tell whether it is from guilt or rage.

"Actually, in a way I think it did." I say, because I have been giving this moment a lot of thought recently. "It made Jeremy wise up to what being a vampire is really about, and stopped him from trying to turn himself again. And then after, Damon was there for him, letting him become a part of the supernatural world, helping him get used to it, being a sibling for him when I wasn't able to."

Bonnie stares at me for a long time, her mouth slightly agape. "You've completely lost your mind," she whispers finally.

"Nope," I say, popping the 'P', something I picked up from Damon. "For the first time since the night my parents died, I am actually seeing things clearly. I am seeing _people_ for who they really are. I see you Bonnie," I take another step closer to her, and she steps back in shock. "I see that you are nothing more than a scared little girl, taking out all your insecurities on anyone around you who might be different, just because you are terrified of your own differences. And I'm done with listening to it." I grab my bag and storm out, leaving Bonnie standing there mouthing wordlessly.

I go through the motions of lunch on my own today, which is actually a relief. I sit out in the sunshine, leaning back against the bench with my eyes closed, as I pick my sandwich to pieces, throwing the crumbs to the ground for the birds to eat later. A shadow crosses over my face and I frown, certain of who it is.

"Can I join you?" Stefan sits down next to me without waiting for an answer. I start to get angry again; he is ruining my precious alone time. I don't get nearly enough these days.

I fling the remaining pieces of my lunch on the floor and jump up, grabbing my book bag and holding Damon's journal close to my chest. "I was just about to go, actually."

"Oh. I was hoping we could talk for a while."

Always with the _talking_. "I can't, I need to go to the library."

Stefan stands up too, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. I know why he has started doing that recently. It's because I have started backing away every time he tries to touch me. "I'll come with you."

I shoot him a look. "We wouldn't really be able to talk in the library, would we?" I sigh and roll my eyes. "I have to go." I walk away, resigning myself to having to spend the rest of lunch inside the dark stuffy school, instead of enjoying the hot afternoon sun and some pleasant daydreams with Damon.

* * *

><p>I know he is there before I enter my bedroom. I walk in with a sigh, throwing my bag on my bed and pulling off my shoes, looking anywhere but at him. He has been doing this a lot lately, turning up in places he expects me to be, casting longing looks in my direction. My teeth grind together so often that I'm starting to get a permanent aching jaw.<p>

"What do you want Stefan?" I'm not angry at the moment, which surprises me. Usually just the mere presence of him is enough to flare my temper. Now though, I'm just tired. Tired of having him following me around; tired of having to constantly reign in my temper; tired of being so angry with him.

"We need to talk," he says shortly, leaning against my dresser. He doesn't even try to use the window seat today. I guess he learnt that lesson last week, when I threw a book at him for sitting there. I made it look like an accident. At least, I think I did. Maybe it hadn't been so subtle after all.

"I've told you Stefan, I don't want to talk about anything yet." I sink down on the edge of my bed, already thinking about the next dream I will have when I finally get to close my eyes.

"But I do." Stefan stands up straight, pushing his hand through his hair as he begins to pace.

I sigh. Clearly he has something he needs to get off his chest, but I'm really not interested. I can see he is determined though, so I decide to let him say whatever it is he needs to say, in the hope it will make him leave quicker.

"Fine. Talk. I'm listening."

"I just... I don't understand what's going on with you at the moment." He continues his pacing, and I watch his feet dispassionately. "I mean, I get that you've lost a lot of people recently, and I understand that, believe me I do, and I'm trying to be here for you, but it's like you don't want me here!"

_Finally got that, have you?_ I think, rolling my eyes slightly. I've only been forcefully pushing him away for the past three weeks. Anyone would think this guy doesn't know how to take a hint. I say nothing out loud though, so he continues.

"Listen, I know you and Damon had this... friendship between you, and I never tried to stand in the way of that –"

"Really? Is that what you think? _Really?_" I am astounded that he thinks so, because I remember quite a few times when he stood in the way. I stand up and face him, my anger renewed. "How about the time you asked me to help you betray him when he was looking for a way into the tomb? Or when you didn't tell him about my connection to Isobel, leaving him to unknowingly make comments that hurt me? How about the time when you told him he would never have my respect?" He looks at me, and I snort. "Yeah, Elijah and I both heard the whole conversation."

He looks at me, and then sighs, before trying again, his tone forcibly calm. "Look, I know you're upset about what happened to him, I am too –"

"Are you? Seriously, are you? Because it seems to me that you can't wait to get started on your new life without him. He's your _brother!_" I stare at him incredulously.

"Exactly, Elena! He was _my_ brother, and I loved him! And now he's gone, and I am _crushed_, but you don't see me wallowing in despair over it! You don't see me giving up everything around me! For God's sake, you're acting like he was the one you were in a relationship with!"

"But I wasn't, was I? I was too busy being blinded by my 'love' for you to see what was right in front of me!" I am so angry that I forget myself, using air quotes when I utter the word 'love'.

Stefan notices, and his eyes widen with shock. "What does that mean?" He shouts.

"It means I chose the wrong brother!" I scream back.

And then I clap my hand over my mouth. I didn't mean to say it, but now that the words are out, I know they are true. My legs buckle beneath me and I slump to the ground where I stand, tears welling up behind my lashes. And for the first time since we've met, Stefan doesn't try to catch me. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I mumble. But I'm not sure if I'm saying it to Stefan or Damon. Maybe I'm saying it to myself. I feel my hair move in a sudden breeze, and when I look up, Stefan is gone.

* * *

><p>The front door of the Boarding House opens just as I reach for the door handle. Damon's arm snakes out and grabs me, pulling me against his chest, where I can hear his heart beating erratically. He holds me close for a minute, his hands patting down my back, as though he is checking me for injuries. I raise one eyebrow at the strange behaviour, but I don't comment on it. I just let him get it out of his system. After a while, he lets me go, taking my hand and leading me into the parlour.<p>

"Are you okay?" He asks me, his gaze worried as he scans my face.

"I'm fine. Why do you ask?" I am puzzled by this sudden weird behaviour. He is normally so calm in my dreams.

He sighs in relief, sagging against the back of the couch, covering his face with his hands. "I thought... I felt your pulse speed up, and I thought you were in danger." His voice is muffled, held back by his fingers pressed tightly against his lips.

I step closer to him, reaching my hand out to caress his arm. "Well I wasn't. I'm fi –"

He spins away from me as my fingers touch his bicep, suddenly angry with me. Great, another argument. I am batting three for three today.

"You don't get it, do you?" He snorts disbelievingly. "Elena, what do you think happens to me when you're not here?

I open my mouth to reply, but I don't have a clue what he means. There is no 'here' when I am awake. This whole room, including the man standing in front of me, doesn't exist. "What? Nothing!" I splutter finally.

"Exactly! Nothing happens, because all this," he spreads his arms wide, "Disappears! But I am still here! I can still feel your heartbeat, and it terrifies me, because I know that you are out there, alone, without me there to protect you, and I can't do anything about it because I am _stuck,_ here in the darkness!" He barks out a laugh, one completely devoid of any humour, and stares down at the ground. "I don't even know what I'm doing here."

I don't answer, because I don't know what to say. I don't understand where all this is coming from, and this is supposed to be all in my own head.

He looks up at me, fury darkening his eyes at my silence. "What am I doing here?" He yells at me suddenly, and I swear I can hear the windows rattle in the face of his glorious anger.

"Why are you shouting at me?" I whimper quietly, feeling tears gather in my eyes.

He makes a disgusted sound and turns away. "For God's sake, it's like you're not even trying!"

That annoys me. I find my voice again and storm back at him angrily. "That's rich coming from you! Who was laying on his deathbed less than a month ago, moaning about how he deserved to die? If there's one person in this room guilty of not even trying, it's _you,_ Damon!"

He runs both his hands through his hair, breathing heavily. "I can't do this anymore. I can't just be _here_ anymore. You need to fix this, Elena!"

"Fix _what_?" I shout back, still not understanding what we are arguing about.

"Whatever it is that you did! You need to fix it!"

"I can't fix something if I don't know what I did!" I am starting to get a bit hysterical, my confusion making it hard for me to concentrate.

"Then you need to let me go, Elena." He comes close to me, gripping the tops of my arms with his fingers, shaking me slightly. "Let me go."

"I can't!" I cry out, the tears that had been threatening to spill finally making their way down my cheeks.

"Why not?" Damon's voice is softer now, but still insistent.

"Because... because..." I flounder to find the right words, still trying to understand what is going on.

"Tell me, Elena. Why can't you let me go?"

"Because I love you!"

The words blurt out of me without my consent, but I know they are true. I have known this for the longest time.

I look into his cerulean blue eyes, his face suddenly softer than I have ever known it to be. "I do, I love you Damon, and I can't let you go. I'm sor –"

He cuts me off with a searing kiss that make my knees buckle. He backs me up against the wall, his hands moving from my shoulders to cup my face. And I think to myself, _this_ should have been our first kiss. This should have happened while we were both still living in reality, in a place where we could spend every moment doing _this_, instead of both of us waiting in the shadows to find each other at the end of every day.

His hands slide down my sides to the tops of my thighs, lifting me easily. I wrap my legs around his waist and moan into his mouth at the contact. My hands are in his hair, and as he slides his lips down over my jaw, I mumble, "I'll fix it. I promise, I'll try harder."

"Shh," he whispers against my skin, nipping at the soft skin covering my collar bone. "Promise me things later, I need you now."

I pull his head back up to mine, locking my lips with his, conveying with my kiss that the feeling is mutual. The wall behind me disappears suddenly, and I feel myself tumbling backwards. Before I can open my eyes, I fall onto a bed, and I realise the scene of the dream has changed, and we are now in his bedroom.

Damon's hands move up from my thighs to my waist, slowly pulling up my shirt, ghosting his fingers over the newly uncovered skin. I am not quite so willing to take things slowly. My hands grab fistfuls of his black t-shirt, pulling it roughly up over his back, my nails digging into his skin. He hisses against my neck, biting down on my shoulder with blunt teeth, and I arch my back into him. He pulls away long enough for me to pull his shirt over his head and I fling it behind me. He joins me finally in my hurry to get us naked, pulling my top off me with one smooth motion, before running his hands down over my breasts, squeezing gently. My hands are just sneaking down to the button of his jeans, when he bends down over me, laving my nipple with his tongue through the thin material of my bra. I forget what I am supposed to be doing for a moment, and my legs wrap tightly around his waist, my entire body craving release between my thighs. He chuckles quietly, the vibrations against my skin sending waves of pleasure through me, and I arch my back again, needing to be closer to him. He slides his hands underneath me, flicking open the clasp of my bra. He slides the straps down my shoulders slowly with his teeth, his tongue flicking out to trail a path down my arms. I am reminded of my previous intentions, and I glide my palms down the hard planes of his chest to his jeans, sliding my fingertips beneath the waistband. My thumb finds the button again, and I flick it open, tugging sharply at either side of the opening, smiling as I hear the rest of the buttons pop undone.

Damon throws my bra across the room, and I giggle as I hear it land on the dresser, knocking over a photo frame. He has seen me naked before in my dreams, but those reactions can't even compare to what I see in his face now, and I feel the need to look away, embarrassed and awed. He looks down at my bare chest, wonder etched onto his features as he reaches out, palming my breasts.

"You're beautiful," he breathes out, and when my gaze travels back to his eyes, he is already looking right into mine.

I reach out for him, and he leans down, capturing my lips with his, a long, slow, deep kiss, that melts my bones. I melt into him, as he trails kisses down my neck, tripping his tongue down to circle first one nipple, and then the other. My hands are back in his hair as he moves down lower, kissing down past my belly button, until he reaches my jeans. He runs his tongue under the waistband as his hands undo the zip, and I lift my hips slightly as he tugs my jeans down to my thighs. His lips follow the movements of his hands, his mouth coming so close to where I want him that the craving is beginning to become painful. He slips my jeans off, then travels back up my body, running his palms up my legs. His finger plays with the hem of my panties as he places open mouth kisses on my inner thighs, his teeth grazing the skin, sending shockwaves of pleasure and need over me. He slips his finger inside my panties, and he gasps at the wet warmth he finds there waiting for him. As his fingertip glides over my most sensitive area, I buck my hips off the bed, and he laughs softly at my impatience. He hooks his thumbs around the silky white material and slides them slowly down to my ankles. As he crawls back up to me, I take advantage of his momentary distraction, reaching down to push his jeans and boxers down over his hips. He kicks them off and then settles between my thighs, one hand stroking my cheek as he looks down at me. I feel the tip of him brush against me, and I wrap my legs around his waist, guiding him.

"Damon," I whisper, as he slowly slides inside me. Right where he belongs.

His lips find mine again as we start to move together, our motions so in sync it is as though we were made for each other. I think maybe we were. Our movements start slowly, as if we had agreed that we both want this to last forever, but it is not long before our need for each other threatens to burst into flames, and burn us both into ashes. He reaches for my hand, our fingers entwining on the sheets above my head. My other hand clenches his shoulder, my nails digging into the skin as I seek release. His fingers are digging into my hip, pulling me closer, sharing my need to be closer than physically possible, even though we are already closer than two people have ever been. Our breaths mingle together as our limbs fold around each other, so that I don't know where I stop and he begins. For the first time in my life, I feel totally, and absolutely, complete.

The tension builds inside me, and as I get closer and closer, I whisper to him. "I love you, Damon."

My name is like a prayer falling from his lips, as he follows me over the edge, and we ride out into sweet oblivion together.

We slump together, not bothering to disentangle, neither of us ready to lose the connection. He reaches his hand up to smooth away my hair, and I kiss his palm tenderly. He tucks my head under his chin, holding me closely, and I feel his heartbeat as it slowly returns to normal.

I smile wistfully as I lean into his chest. "You have to go soon, don't you?" I sigh.

"Not anymore," he says, sounding content and sleepy.

"Are you sure?" My fingers clench around him at the thought of him leaving me here after our night together.

"I promise. I will be here. I will never leave you again."

I relax into his arms, letting myself drift into sleep, grateful for his promise. And then I remember, this is in _my_ head. The reason why he kept leaving, why he never made the first move, was because I hadn't been ready to stay with him. Now the dreams will no longer turn dark and empty, because I would be taking him with me.

The sound of his heartbeat lulls me deeper into sleep, and one last thought flutters through my brain. I wish with everything that I am that I could stay in the darkness with him.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So, the last bit might seem a bit confusing, with not many answers, but it is supposed to come across like that, because Elena doesn't yet know what is happening. It's up to her to find out what is going on. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, and please review? After all, Christmas is the time for giving! ;) xx**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: I hope everyone had a good** **christmas, and Santa left you lots of goodies in your stockings! Now, I had a bit of trouble with ****this chapter; Elena really wasn't cooperating with me here! So, this chapter is really more of a filler, with not much going on, and little progress in the story as a whole. However, I do think it is important to show how Elena is changing as she goes through the separate stages, and this one is the third stage. From here on in, we'll be finding out more about what happened and what she has to do to fix it. I hope you enjoy this latest installment, and I will try to update again as soon as I can! 3**

* * *

><p><em>Bargaining: The act of promising extraordinary measures to have an impossible situation rectified.<em>

* * *

><p>I am running late for school. For the third time this week. And it's only Wednesday. Even worse, it's history first thing this morning. I run through the empty halls, giving my locker a miss, because I would rather show up closer to on time and without my books than even later and slightly more prepared. I yank open the door and whirl into the classroom, slamming the door behind me in my haste. I look around the room, trying to get my breathing back under control. You'd think that with all the running for my life I have had to do recently, I would be in better shape. My slight wheezing tells me otherwise.<p>

Giving Ric a small smile in apology, I slide into my seat, ignoring the fact that everybody is looking at my louder than planned entrance. So much for keeping a low profile. Ric resumes his lecture, and I notice that not only is everybody looking down at their textbooks, but the seats to either side of me are empty. Great, now I can't share with somebody else. I start to regret not making that quick detour to my locker. I look around slowly, trying not to draw attention to myself, to work out why those seats are empty. A quick glance around the room answers the question for one of them; there is no sign of Caroline's blond head. I wonder where she is. It's not like she can come down with a cold.

And then I notice the reason for the other empty chair. Bonnie has moved from her normal position on my right, and taken over Stefan's usual seat. As I look in her direction, she turns to look out of the window, studiously ignoring my gaze. I feel a pang in my chest at her behaviour, and I wince slightly. It's been three weeks since our argument, and we haven't spoken a word about it since. To each other, anyway. I've talked to Caroline about it, and Damon, of course. I've skirted around the subject with Alaric and Jeremy at home over dinner, although never with too much information. I don't want anything to do with me to get in the way of Jeremy's relationship with my former best friend. I've even talked to her voicemail about it, because Bonnie won't answer my calls anymore. I've cried about that a little, with Damon's arms around me, his hand rubbing my back while I soak his shirt with my tears. It's weird, because although Damon and Bonnie have never got on, he still knows the right things to say to make me feel better about the situation. Sometimes it makes me angry with Bonnie all over again, because he obviously understands her better than she ever understood him. But most of the time it just makes me sad, because I think that if they could have just gotten over their prejudices for each other, they might even have been able to be friends.

I am sorry now for the way I acted with her. I was being stupid, because I _know_ why she reacted that way, and I _know_ she has every right to how she feels. I guess the things I said had been bottled up inside me for too long, and so when I finally let them out, what I had been trying to say just got all muddled up with the anger I was feeling, and the end result came out much harsher than I intended. I'm not sorry for saying what I did, because Bonnie could use a wake-up call. She _is_ a supernatural, and she lives in a world full of other supernatural creatures and situations, and she needs to learn that in this world, not everything is black and white. Not everything can be placed neatly in a box and given a name. Not everything lands on just one side of the line between right and wrong. There are shades of grey, and there will be times when the right thing to do won't be so easy to find. Damon encapsulates all of these qualities, and then some, which I think is why I got so angry with her. She herself has done some things that put morality squarely in the grey area, and yet she can't seem to see that this is what Damon does every day. Yes, he has made some mistakes, but so has everybody else on this planet, including Bonnie. She really needs to work this out, and realise that there is so much more to people than just good or evil, or right and wrong. So no, I'm not sorry for saying what I said, but I am sorry for how and when it came out. And I am sorry for what this has done to our once strong friendship. There was a time when we were like sisters; we would die for each other, without question. And then the whole world was turned upside down, and things changed between us. I miss our closeness, and I would do anything to get it back, but how can I regret the world changing when it brought me to him? I wish that I could figure out a way to fix whatever is broken between us, but I have only so much room in my head to concentrate on fixing things. My friendship with Bonnie will have to wait. Some things are more important.

* * *

><p>The bell rings suddenly, signifying the end of class, bringing me out of my reverie. I look down at my notebook, on which I have only written the date. I close the book and shove it back into my bag, shrugging. I'm in love with a 170 year old vampire, completing a history class is not going to be on my to do list. As I stand up, I notice Alaric, beckoning to me through the crowd of students moving towards the door, Bonnie's brown locks in the centre. Seems she can't get away from me fast enough. I head towards the teacher's desk, biting my lip in anticipation. I know Ric is going to say something about my latest run of tardiness. He won't go all 'teacher' on me, because that would just make us both feel awkward, especially as I've already told him I'll be cooking him dinner this evening. So I wait, trying to control my breathing, hoping he won't ask me any questions that I won't be able to answer.<p>

Ric shuts the door behind the last of my class mates and walks to his side of the desk, perching himself on the corner.

"You were late again, today?"

I frown, wondering how he knew this wasn't the first morning this week that I had run into class well after the start of class.

"The other teachers in the lounge mentioned it to me, since I'm now your sort of, um, guardian." Ric says uncomfortably, noticing my confusion. "Is everything okay?"

No, everything is not okay, I want to shout. I am stuck here in this classroom with you, instead of back at the Boarding House carrying on my research! But I can't say that, obviously. Mainly because Alaric doesn't know what I have spent the last two weeks doing every night. So I smile and say brightly, "Of course! Everything's fine."

"Are you sure? I know you and Stefan have been trying to work things out –"

"I've just... had a lot on my mind recently." I interrupt him, backing slowly towards the door. "I promise to try better tomorrow though, okay? I won't be late again. See you tonight for dinner!" I scramble to open the door and fly through it before Alaric can say anything else, making my way quickly down the hallway to the front of the school.

I knew that Alaric had reasoned away my spending so much time at the Boarding House as having something to do with Stefan, and I haven't yet worked up the courage to tell him otherwise. At the moment, he is fine with me leaving the house every night after dinner and spending the night at Damon's, and I don't want him to start questioning my motives. I need the space, and the quiet, that the Boarding House offers. Not to mention the other few perks being in that house offers.

I sit down on a bench in the sunshine and pull out my phone, intending to call Caroline and see if she's okay. It's unusual for her to not be in school, and I'm feeling a little bit anxious. I can't think of a reason why she would suddenly not show up. I look at the screen before pulling up her number, a habit from before my life started to suck. There was a time when my phone would be full with answer phone messages and text messages, from everybody from my fellow cheerleaders to my parents to boys asking me out. Even after everything went to hell, I would still be receiving calls from Stefan, or from Jeremy, Bonnie or Caroline, even Damon occasionally – although he always prefers the personal touch, rather than a phone call. Nowadays though, my phone is about as dead as my social life. I don't wish for everything to go back to how it was before I learned about the supernatural, but there are times when I would give anything to have that team feeling back again. It's strange, because a lot of the time it felt as though Damon's presence was what kept us all from working together properly, but now, it's as though his absence has fractured our group into unrecognisable pieces. He really was the glue that held us all together. We just didn't notice it at the time. I wish we could go back and do it all over again, so we could give him the recognition that he deserves for that. At the time, most of us pretty much just treated him like a pariah. I don't know how he managed to stick around and put up with all of that, and I wish I could change it.

I listen to the ringing of Caroline's phone, and hear the click as it moves me over into voicemail. I leave a message, asking her if she's okay, and then hang up, concern growing in my chest. Things have been quiet here for the past two months, with everything just going along as it always has, but I have been wondering if this was just the calm before the inevitable storm. Klaus may have left Mystic Falls, unaware of my survival of the ritual, but that didn't mean he would never come back. It also didn't mean that there weren't other supernatural baddies out there, waiting for their moment to shine in all their evil glory.

I'm about to call Sheriff Forbes and ask if she knows where her daughter is, when my phone buzzes in my hand, signalling the arrival of a text message.

_I'm with Stefan. I'll come see you later._

The message from Caroline causes yet another twinge of guilt within me, as I remember my last conversation with Stefan. Just like with Bonnie, I had hurt him terribly with the things I said. I hadn't meant to hurt him so much, but I had just been so angry. Not just with him, but with everything, at the way everyone seemed to be moving on, when I just couldn't. I still can't, especially now I know the truth. Well, some of the truth anyway. There's still a lot I need to find out. But even being as angry as I had been was no excuse for how I had spoken to Stefan, or what I had screamed in his face. He didn't need to hear that. At least, not in that way. He needed to know how I really felt, and I don't feel any regret over the fact that he now knows, but I do wish I could have told him differently. Maybe we could have worked out a way to still be friends.

I haven't told anybody yet, but Stefan isn't in Mystic falls anymore. The morning after our last fight, I awoke, back in my own bed, to find a letter for me resting on my pillow. The note had been short and to the point. Stefan had decided that living here, seeing me every day, and not being able to be with me was too hard, and so he had decided to move on. I wonder if he ever thought about how hard it had been for Damon, yet Damon had stayed. If I needed anymore proof that Stefan and I had been fooling ourselves, this letter was it. Because no matter what happened, Damon and I have never been able to walk away from each other. Stefan and I had done that all too often. Stefan didn't blame me in so many words, but I know that he is hurting. I know that maybe I should feel some regret, or maybe sadness, over the fact that our relationship is over. We went through so much together, after all. But I don't feel anything like that. All I feel is relief, as though a great weight has finally been lifted from off my shoulders. But I am sorry for how I ended things, because that shouldn't have been how our relationship should have ended. We should have parted quietly, with emotional words of how a part of each of us will always love the other, how we wish things could have worked out. I had that kind of ending with Matt, and we were still friends, still able to live in the same town as each other. I wish I could have had that kind of ending with Stefan, and it's my own fault that we didn't.

Stefan's departure from Mystic Falls was so quiet, that only I knew. I think he might have compelled the teachers to not mention anything about his absence, because I haven't heard anybody wondering where he is. Of course, he couldn't compel Alaric, so I've been avoiding spending time with him as much as possible, in case he starts asking me questions, or wondering where I really go every night, when he thinks I'm off re-establishing my relationship with Stefan. He had heard the argument in my room, of course, but he hadn't been able to pick out the words used, because otherwise he'd know that our relationship would have been pretty much unsalvageable after that, even if I had wanted to try again. I'm not ready to tell anyone yet that Stefan has gone. I need more time.

And then I start wondering how Caroline could be with Stefan now. Had he talked to her? Told her what happened between us, and told her he had left town? And if she was with him now, he couldn't have gone very far, could he? I guess I will just have to wait for Caroline to find me tonight to get any answers, and I don't think I'm going to enjoy the conversation very much. Caroline is already acting slightly cold towards me over what happened between me and Bonnie. She hates it when one of the three of us is fighting with another, and I know she blames me for this current schism in our three way friendship. She has already pleaded with me to try and fix it, which was the main reason why I tried calling Bonnie, as useful as that had been. I hate to think about her reaction when she finds out the reason for Stefan's sudden disappearance. Out of all my friends and family, Caroline has been the most supportive of me recently, but that may be about to change.

The bell goes, signalling the end of lunch hour, but I really can't stomach the idea of spending the afternoon stuck inside a classroom. I wait until everybody else has drifted towards the doors, then get up and make my way quickly towards the parking lot, hoping that Alaric isn't looking out of any windows. I get in my car and drive off, heading straight for the Boarding House. A few more hours of research before dinner sounds like a much more productive use of my time.

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><p>I enter the library, seeing all the books and stacks of notes that I had left scattered about the room in the early hours of the morning. I should really tidy this all up; maybe if I was more organised and methodical, I would achieve better results. I go into the kitchen and return a few minutes later, a large mug of coffee in my hands to help me through the arduous task. I start gathering up the papers that I had thrown around the room, my frustration evident in the way many of them are crumpled and torn. I smooth them out and start making piles, one for each myth that the research material in front of me covers. It's not long before I feel the tickle at the back of my neck that tells me I'm being watched. I smile, because this type of feeling doesn't come with a need to run and hide, just grin with delight. I turn, and there he is, leaning against the fireplace, a glass half filled with bourbon in his hand.<p>

"You should be at school," Damon says, raising one eyebrow and bringing the drink to his lips. I watch as the liquid coats his upper lip, and all I want to do is fold myself into his arms and lick it off, before doing other tasty things. The feeling of loss quickly follows on the heels of my lust, as I remember that I can't do that, at least not here. When I am asleep, I can do anything I want, feel anything I want, but here, when I am awake, I can only look, and listen.

It hurts, but at the same time I am glad he is here, because it means our connection is still getting stronger. After that dream I had, where I finally admitted to myself – and Damon too, I guess – that I am in love with him, the link between us has grown. That morning, after I had found Stefan's letter on my pillow, I had come out of the bathroom to find Damon sitting on my window seat, smiling softly at me. He looked so real, that for a moment, I thought the whole thing had been a dream. I had launched myself into his arms, ready to tell him out loud what I had told him in my dream, only to have him dissipate, leaving me sitting on the window seat, feeling more alone than I had ever felt before. After that, he had turned up occasionally, in places that meant things to me, to us, during our fragile relationship. He would be out on the porch when I returned home from school, or in my kitchen while I was trying to make dinner for myself and Jeremy and Alaric. He only showed up when I was alone though, and would disappear each time we were interrupted by the arrival of someone else.

This is part of the reason why I have been spending so much time at the Boarding House. The old building is saturated with his presence, and I find he pops up here a lot more often than he does at my house. Plus, of course, there's nobody here to come and interrupt us, so he doesn't disappear on me, at least until it's time for me to go to sleep, where I know he'll be waiting for me. My dreams have changed slightly too. We spend more and more of our time at the Boarding House, either curled up on one of the sofas in front of a roaring fire, or curled up in bed together, taking our time exploring each other's naked bodies. I love these dreams, but at the same time there is a definite melancholic feel to them. Though neither of us bring it up, we both know that we should have had this back in reality, and the fact that it is my fault that we didn't places a heaviness inside my chest.

So that's why, with every waking moment that I can manage, I am here in the library of the Boarding House, books and papers strewn around me as I try to work out what has happened. Why Damon didn't die. Why he seems to be stuck in the subconscious of my mind, linked to me in a way nobody has ever been linked before.

I smile as I put down a handful of papers onto the 'doppelganger' pile. "It was just English. It's not like I needed to be there. I could do that lesson in my sleep."

"Damon smirks and waggles his eyebrows at me. "Well, you _could._ But I can think of a few other things we could be doing in your sleep."

"Well, you can definitely sign me up for that later, but right now I should really start working on this stuff." I sigh, and sit down at the desk. "I'm not sure how much research I will be able to get done tonight."

Damon perches on the corner of the desk, his jean clad thigh so close that for a moment I really believe that I could reach out and touch him. "Why? Did something happen today?" The concern he is feeling for me is clearly written on his face, proving to me all over again how he always manages to read my emotions better than I think even I do.

"Caroline found out about Stefan today," I say, looking at him closely to see his reaction. "She said she was going to come see me later." His eyes flicker with an emotion I can't quite read, but then the wall comes up, and there is nothing but cool indifference on his face. I know it's just his mask, and that he is used to hiding his emotions, but I wish he didn't feel the need to hide them from me. I'll have to work on that with him. Once we get him back to reality, that is.

I know he misses his brother, and the fact that Stefan left town without seeming to care that his older brother was stuck in some kind of weird stasis had hurt him more than he would ever admit to me. But the fact is, nobody knows what has happened to Damon, not even me. At least, not yet.

I sigh again and pull the pile of doppelganger research towards me. This was all the stuff that I had managed to get from Isobel's research. After raiding Alaric's boxes of files, I had then driven to Duke and collected the rest of my biological mother's things. I stored it all here at the Boarding House, where I would pretty much be guaranteed privacy. I had already poured over every word about vampires and werewolf bites, but there had been absolutely nothing to suggest that a vampire could just slip into a coma instead of dying from the effects of a bite. So now, I am looking through the research of the only other variable from that night: Me. Damon had had my blood in his system when the effects of the bite had really started to take hold, and I was the only person who had been with him when he had fallen unconscious. At the very least, I was hoping that there would be something here that might explain why Damon and I were connected so strongly.

* * *

><p>A few hours and several mugs of coffee later, and I am about ready to chuck the whole lot into the fireplace. "Nothing!" I say in disgust, pushing out of the armchair and pacing up and down in front of the fire. "There's absolutely nothing there!"<p>

Damon is still sitting on the edge of the desk, unable to help me search in his current non-corporeal form. "Are you sure?" He frowns down at the spread of papers and books across the desk. "That's an awful lot of stuff to just say nothing."

I growl under my breath slightly, annoyance building up inside me at the futility of our situation. "There's just a load of repeated nonsense about doppelgangers being supernatural occurrences – which we already _knew_, for God's sake."

"And that's it? Nothing else?"

"Well, there was some mention of them having some kind of magical qualities, but that's probably just another way of saying 'supernatural occurrences'." I run my hands through my hair, pulling at it slightly in my frustration. "We're never going to work this out!"

Damon stands up and moves towards the fireplace, cutting off my pacing. "We will. We just have to keep looking." He says to me calmly, and I wonder slightly when he became the voice of reason between the pair of us.

"I know, it's just... I don't even know if I'm on the right track." I blow out a breath and close my eyes, struggling to calm myself.

"Elena, who are you talking to?"

I spin around at the sound of the intruding voice, noticing out of the corner of my eye as Damon suddenly winked out of existence.

"Caroline. What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," the blond vampire moves further into the room, placing her bag down on a chair as she surveys the mess of papers and books scattered across every available surface. A frown graces her forehead as she looks back at me, crossing her arms and putting on her stern face. "We need to talk, Elena."

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><p><strong>AN: So, there we go. I hope you enjoyed it, and please review!**


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Another chapter! Woohoo! I've come to the conclusion that writing in first person is actually kind of difficult. I know some of you are starting to get frustrated with the lack of info, but I can't really help with that, because I only know what Elena knows, and so until she finds out what is going on, we are kept in the dark as much as she is, LOL. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed though, and of course to those of you who have story alerted etc., it means so much to me I can't even tell you! I _think _we have about another two chapters to go, plus an epilogue.**

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><p><strong><em>Depression: A mood disorder marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty with thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings or dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal thoughts or an attempt to commit suicide.<em>**

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><p>"We need to talk, Elena."<p>

Caroline is standing across from me, her arms folded in front of her pink clad chest, a look of forced seriousness pinching her usually open features. I sigh and sink down into one of the chairs near the fireplace, trying not to mind too much that her arrival has meant the disappearance of Damon. After all, at the moment, Caroline is one of the few people left still talking to me at this point.

"Fine," I say dejectedly. "Where do you want to start?"

Caroline looks around the room for a minute, her expression softening as she takes in the dusty glasses and decanters that Damon hasn't been able to touch in over two months, the chairs that he hasn't been able to sit in, the desk he hasn't been able to kick his feet up on to, and the fireplace only I have been able to watch him pace in front of. She hesitates for a moment, before moving to sit in a chair across from me, and I watch as her expression flits to something approaching panic, before she forces it back into stern and disapproving. I can tell she's not comfortable with this. Caroline doesn't normally do seriousness, and lectures are things to roll your eyes at and ignore, as far as she is concerned.

She takes a deep breath, and then starts with a fairly obvious statement. "I was with Stefan today. He told me what happened between you two the other week."

She obviously needs a run up before starting in on lecturing me. I nod my head, looking down at the floor separating us.

"You weren't very nice to him," Caroline continues, her voice wavering as she tries to sound disappointed, making her just seem confused.

I don't blame her. I've been spending the last couple of months drowning in confusion. I nod my head again, still not sure what to say.

"I don't get it, Elena!" Caroline bursts out, all attempts at remaining calm and focused flying out of the window. She stands up and starts pacing in the exact spot that I had just been trying to wear a hole through the carpet, her arms moving in short spasms as she tries to come up with the right words. "The things you said to him! The things you said to Bonnie! It's like you're purposefully trying to push everybody who loves you as far away as you can! What is going on with you?" She whirls to face me suddenly, compassion for me at war with frustration evident on her face.

I start to cry. Again. Even the smallest things set me off these days.

Elena," Caroline breaths out, and she moves forward to wrap her arms around me. I lean my head against her shoulder and sob for a while, pouring my sadness and desperation onto my friend for a moment.

"I know, I'm sorry!" I hiccup, as I move away, wiping my face dry with my sleeve. "I didn't mean to hurt him like that. I didn't mean for it all to come out like that."

Caroline pulls her chair closer to mine and perches on the edge, holding my hand in both of her own. "Stefan loves you, Elena. I'm sure, if you apologise to him, and you both sit down and talk, you can both sort this whole thing out." She strokes the back of my hand, punctuating her soothing tone.

I shake my head. "I don't want to sort it out, Care. Stefan and I are over." I take a deep breath to calm myself as I look up at her. "I feel really bad about how it ended, but I'm not sorry that it's finished."

Caroline stares at me for a moment, a lack of understanding clear as she raises her eyebrows in disbelief. "You can't mean that! You and Stefan love each other!"

I shake my head again. "I do love Stefan, but not in that way. I love him like I love you, or Jeremy, or Bonnie. I'm just not... in love with him."

Caroline shakes her head slowly from side to side as she processes this new information. I don't get it. You two were always so..." She trails off, not knowing where to go with this.

"I think I just clung to the idea that our relationship was so great, because all the crazy stuff was happening around us, and he was the only thing that made sense." I say, trying to make her understand. "I just, I guess I never really examined how I really felt before."

"You mean, before Damon died."

I close my eyes, willing this conversation to go off in a different direction.

"Don't think I didn't notice how you left his name off the people you love." Caroline squeezes my hand hard, and I open my eyes to see her staring at me in concern. Is that what all this is about? Were you... in love with Damon?" Her voice trails off into a whisper as she utters this last sentence.

I don't want to answer that question. It has nothing to do with being afraid of her reaction, or even that I'm worried about what she might think of me for feeling that way about Damon. The reason is that I don't want to voice those feelings out loud to anybody but him. I've told him in my dreams, whispered those three words into his ear as we've made love, shouted them out loud while he tickles my ribs as we lay on the couch watching movies together. But I haven't said them to him out here, in the real world. I want the first time I utter those words while I am awake, to be directed to him, where he can hear, so that he knows how I feel. It just doesn't feel right telling anybody else first.

So I prevaricate. I look down at my lap, my fingers finding a loose thread on the arm of the chair as I frown in thought. "You know, I've never really understood why people always use the past tense about their feelings for people after they've died. I mean, just because they're dead, does that mean we stop loving them? Even I do it, I say "I loved my parents", but that's not really true, is it? I haven't stopped loving them, just because they're no longer here, have I? But everyone always uses the past tense. It's weird, don't you think?"

"I guess," Caroline nods her head once, before her eyes widen slightly, as she realises that while I haven't directly answered her question, I haven't denied it either. A slight frown creases her normally smooth forehead, and she leans in to give me another hug.

"What are you doing spending all your time here?" She asks finally, as she pulls back and takes in the stacks of papers strewn across the desk. "What is all this stuff?"

I look at her, chewing my lower lip in thought. Could I trust Caroline with this? I need some help, because I've been going around in circles. However, even when we all worked as a team, Caroline was not the person you called for a research partner. God knows, I love her, but the girl has the attention span of a gnat. Plus, there's the added worry of the fact that the fun-loving blonde couldn't keep a secret if you held a stake to her chest.

"Elena," Caroline rubbed my shoulder lightly. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what's going on."

On the other hand, right now, she was the only person still willing to talk to me. I decide to take the chance. If it looks like she really won't believe me, then I'll just pretend to agree that I'm losing my mind with grief, and hopefully she'll forget about it.

I take a deep breath. "I don't think he's really dead, Care. No, listen to me," I rush on, seeing her face crumple and her mouth open, ready to say something generic about loss and grief. "When he... 'died' that night," I use air quotes, and her frown deepens, but I carry on. "There were no veins. He didn't look like a dead vampire."

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean –"

"Caroline, think about it! You found Vicki, remember? Remember what she looked like?" A sick look passes over Caroline's face, but I'm not sure whether it's because she still finds that night disturbing, or if she's now thinking of what she could end up looking like if she ever found herself on the wrong end of a stake.

Finally she sighs. "Even if that's true, it doesn't mean he didn't die –"

"There's more," I interrupt her, before coming to a sudden halt. Should I tell her about the rest of it? What if she doesn't believe me? But Caroline is looking at me expectantly, so I push forward. I'll deal with the consequences later, but right now, the desire to _tell someone_ is burning me up. "I talk to him. In my dreams. Mostly anyway, but sometimes when I'm awake too."

Caroline smiles sadly at me. "I think dreaming about him is to be expected, 'Lena," she says soothingly.

"I know, but this is different Care. Trust me, I've already done enough grieving to be able to write a book about it, but this just feels different. It's not just images or snaps of memories of the past, like the dreams I had about my parents were. This is _real._ We have actual conversations, and it feels as real as we do right here, right now." I lean forward and grab hold of her arms. "Caroline, please believe me. I'm not crazy!"

Caroline stares at me for a moment, then takes in a deep breath and shakes her head slightly. "Okay. Let's say that I do believe you –"

I cut her off by jumping out of my chair and throwing my arms tight around her neck. I squeeze her hard, as tears of gratitude and relief slide down over my cheeks and into her butter soft hair. "Thank you," I whisper.

She hugs me back, patting my hair slightly, until I realise that being that close to my neck can't be comfortable for her, and I pull back.

"Okay, you are going to have to back up and tell me everything that has happened, either in your dreams or out of it, so I can help you figure out what to do." Caroline stands up straight and looks at me expectantly, and I blush slightly. There are definitely some things I will be keeping to myself.

So I stand there and tell her – almost – everything that I have been experiencing ever since the night Damon 'died', watching her face closely as I do. Even with all of the information, there is still the very real probability that Caroline will be calling for a straight jacket by the time I'm finished. After all, she had a hard enough time believing that Bonnie is a witch at first, so I can only imagine how freaked out she will be over the fact that I seem to have some kind of weird mind-meld thing going on with a comatose vampire.

When I am finished, she stares at me for a while, and I swallow hard, biting my lip, bracing myself for the sympathetic smile and the worried look to come into her eyes. But my bubbly vampire friend surprises me.

"Well, something weird is definitely going on." She says, nodding her head once.

"You – you believe me?" I gasp out, relief and incredulity raising my voice to an almost inaudible high-pitched squeak.

Caroline smiles at me and shrugs. "I'm not saying that any of this means that Damon isn't actually dead, but 'Lena, you're not the type of person to go all hysterical and start having hallucinations." She pats my shoulder as she moves over to the desk. "If you say these things are happening, and that they feel real to you, then I believe you." She starts sifting through the pile of papers on the desk, as I lean forward and let out a sigh, covering my face with my hands as I let tears of relief and gratitude fall. "You're looking up doppelgangers?"

I wipe my face, and take a deep breath, ready to get back into research mode, now that I have some help finally. "Well, I've already looked into werewolf bites. There's not a lot to go on with that." I move over to join her at the desk. "I just figured that as I'm some kind of weird supernatural occurrence, maybe the presence of my blood in his system did something weird."

"You should apologise to him, you know. Stefan," she explains, at my confused look.

I sigh and drop my gaze. "I know. I will, I promise," I say, nodding slightly.

"Although, if I were you, I'd probably go and say sorry to Bonnie first."

I grit my teeth. This was not the sort of help I was expecting. "I'll do that too. But right now, I need to concentrate on working this out."

"And that's exactly why you should make it up with Bonnie." Caroline cocks a hip, placing her hand upon it as she looks at me smugly. "If some kind of weird supernatural voodoo stuff really did happen, she's the one you need to talk to."

I blink back at her in shock, mainly at the fact that she has managed to work out something so simple so quickly, while I had been going in circles for weeks. She's right. I need Bonnie's help.

* * *

><p>I pull my car up at the side of the road outside Bonnie's house and look up at the brightly lit windows. I take a deep breath, blowing the air slowly through my lips. I have known Bonnie forever, and so I know all about her ability to hold a grudge. There have been people from kindergarten that she has never spoken to again, because they've stolen her crayons.<p>

I get out of the car and walk up to the porch. It's late, and it's a school night, but I know her dad's probably still out somewhere, and that Bonnie would never go to sleep with all the lights on. I take another deep breath and knock on the door, biting my lip as I wait for the inevitable cold front I am about to encounter.

Bonnie's brown head becomes visible on the other side of the glass, and I know my face is currently as distorted as hers. The welcoming smile on her face slides off as soon as the door opens wide enough for her to see me, and I watch as her trademark frown takes its place. "Hi," I say, smiling weakly, suddenly realising I hadn't thought any further than her opening the door.

"What do you want?" Bonnie folds her arms in front of her chest, her lower jaw sticking out in anger.

May as well get the hard part over with. "Bonnie, I'm sorry," I say, leaning towards her slightly, trying to convey with my eyes that I mean what I say. "I was just really angry, and I directed that anger at you. You're my best friend, Bonnie," I reach out to touch her arm, feeling relief when she doesn't step away. "I didn't mean to hurt you, and I'm so sorry for that."

Bonnie looks at me for a moment, before nodding her head slowly. "I guess I wasn't being as sympathetic as I should have been," she allows, giving me a rueful smile.

"But you had your reasons for that," I say, and open my arms up to hug it out. She folds her arms around me and we stand there for a moment, and for a second I feel nothing but elation that we are back on speaking terms again. But then reality sets back in quickly, and I remember I'm here for far more important things.

"Do you want to come in?" Bonnie asks, as she finally lets me go.

I nod enthusiastically, grateful that I didn't have to ask, and follow my friend into her living room, where – Yes! – I spy a huge pile of spell books.

"I was just going to make some tea, do you want some?" Bonnie smiles at me as I sit down in my usual spot in the armchair closest to the fire.

"That sounds great. Then we can have a good girly catch up session."

Bonnie laughs a little. "In that case, I'll see if I can dig up some popcorn too."

She walks off in the direction of the kitchen, and as soon as she rounds the corner, I shoot up out of my seat and launch myself at the pile of magic books. Bonnie and I may be back on speaking terms, but I am not ready to tell her what's been going on. She wouldn't understand. I guess I don't really blame her, witches have a bad history with vampires, and Bonnie has a bad history with my vampire especially. So, although I feel bad about rummaging through her personal things, and using repairing our friendship as a ruse to get inside her house, I don't feel bad enough to stop. She'll understand in the end. Hopefully.

I scrabble through the pile, trying to remember which order they were in as I fan them out around me, my eyes scanning hurriedly through the titles, praying I get lucky and one jumps out at me. When that doesn't work, I start picking them up at random, flicking through the yellowed pages, hoping a spell or something will call to me. I flip through them quicker and quicker, panic rising in me as I realise I am taking too long, that Bonnie will walk back into the room any minute now and catch me. I hear the microwave announce its termination, and know that I have only seconds before my friend will be back with the popcorn and tea. Disappointment rising inside me, I hurriedly put the books back in the pile, trying to remember their original order. As I move to stand up, I notice a slim volume, tucked under the edge of the coffee table. I must have dropped it when I scattered the books in all directions. I pull it out with my fingernails, but just as I am about to place it randomly among the rest of the tomes, I feel a slight shiver run down my spine. "_That one,_" a voice whispers in my ear, so quietly I wonder if I am imagining it. Hearing footsteps behind me, I leap up from the floor, and as Bonnie rounds the corner of the room, I am back in my spot in front of the fire.

"Here we go!" Bonnie says brightly, placing the cups of tea and the bowl of popcorn on the table. "We haven't had a girls' night in like this for ages, it'll be nice."

I nod and smile a little uncomfortably, my eyes straying down to the messenger bag at my feet, the slim book safely nestled inside.

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><p>I stay with Bonnie for as long as I can stand it, the need to check out the book eating me up as I try to concentrate on what my friend is saying. Eventually though, I can't take the suspense any longer, so I make a vague excuse and scramble out of the door as fast as it is polite. As I get in my car, I pull out my phone, intending to call Caroline, hoping she'll want to meet up with me to help me find whatever it is that I'm looking for. Before I can do anything however, it rings in my hand, my home number flashing on the screen.<p>

"Elena? Where are you? I thought you were making dinner tonight?"

I squeeze my eyes shut as I wince. I had completely forgotten about dinner. "I'm sorry Ric, I was with Caroline and Bonnie." It's not really a lie, just a whole lot of stretching of the truth. "I guess we lost track of time."

I hear a satisfied sigh on the other end of the line, and I can tell that Alaric is pleased that I seem to be getting back into doing things with my friends.

"Do you want me to come home a try to cook something now?" I ask, desperately hoping he'll say no to my offer.

"No, that's okay, Jer ordered pizza. He couldn't wait." Alaric lets out a chuckle, and I sigh with relief.

"Good. I'll be home soon, okay?" I hang up, then decide that I don't really want to call Caroline right now. I am all tired out from interacting today. Instead, I drive towards the one place where I can usually guarantee being alone.

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><p>The night air is warm, so I shrug off my jacket and use it as a blanket, spreading it over the grass stretched between my parents' graves. Lowering myself down, I rummage around in my bag for a moment, before my fingers close around the book I had borrowed from Bonnie.<p>

"Where did you find that?"

I jump at the sound, not because the voice is unfamiliar, but because I have never heard him speak here. I look up, and see Damon leaning against the angel statue.

"What are you... How are you here?" I stutter. He has only been able to show up in places that have meant something to the both of us. For a moment, my heart soars. Is he back? Is this really him?

He shakes his head with a rueful smile, as though he knows exactly what I'm thinking. As well he should, seeing as he's still apparently just a figment of my imagination.

"Do you know when I saw you for the first time?" He asks quietly, his face turned up to look at the purple night sky.

I nod. Of course I remember that moment. "It was at the Boarding House, when I came over to visit Stefan for the first time."

Damon smirks slightly. "Nope. That was the first time we met. But the first time I saw you," he reaches up a hand to caress the smooth marble statue. "You were sitting right where you are now." He smiles and makes his way over to me, and suddenly I remember. Images of me running from the fog that surrounded me, of the freaky crow staring boldly at me, flood my mind, and I remember the sensation of being watched.

"That was you?" I ask, amazed, as he sits down on the grass next to me, peering over at the book in my lap.

"Mmhmm." He waggles his eyebrows at me, and I roll my eyes, but I can't help smiling anyway.

"I picked this up at Bonnie's." A thought occurs to me as I turn the book over in my hands. "Were you there too?"

"No," he frowns at me.

"No, I guess you couldn't, not if you've never been invited in." I wonder who the voice had belonged to. Then I wonder if there had even been a voice, or if I'd imagined it.

"That's kind of a moot point now, love," Damon grins at me, his eyes tinged with sadness. "I can't get invited in anywhere now, can I?"

I look down at the book, not wanting him to see the pain in my gaze. He shouldn't have to deal with seeing it as well as feeling it. Our emotions are so twisted together with our current connection, that sometimes I'm not sure if I'm feeling a genuine emotion of my own, or if it's somehow tied to him. I like it though. It reinforces this weird link we currently share.

"So, what is it?" Damon asks, nodding at the volume in my hand, peering over my shoulder to look at the title.

I hold it up, letting the moonlight shine on the cover of the book so that we can both read it.

_Magicae Sunt et Proprietates Mysticum._

"What the hell does that mean?" I ask out loud. And how could this possibly help us?

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Okay, so, those of you familiar with Latin will know what the title of the book means. Those of you who don't, well I guess you'll have to wait until the next chapter! Heehee. I hope you enjoyed it, and please, please, review?**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Thank you everyone who has reviewed - over 120! I'm so shocked and delighted, I can't even begin to describe it right now! I love you guys! So, I left you all with a bit of a cliff hanger last time didn't I? Sorry about that, but it just felt right to leave it there, so I hope you can forgive me? I have one more chapter for this story, and then anepilogue, so we're going to be finding some stuff out very soon, I promise! I hope you enjoy it :)**

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><p><strong><em>Melancholy: A sad, thoughtful, pensive state of mind.<em>**

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><p>"So, what does it mean?"<p>

I am sitting back in the library at the Boarding House, my knees pulled up to my chin as I watch Caroline gingerly inspect the book I had liberated from Bonnie's house the night before.

"It means 'Magical Beings and their Mystical Properties'," I say with a shrug, waiting for her reaction when she finally opens the book and sees that the whole thing is written in Latin.

"How do you know that?" Caroline looks at me with surprise, and a little suspicion.

"Damon told me," I say, looking at her carefully. "Apparently, Latin was a big part of the school curriculum a hundred and fifty years ago."

Her eyes widen for a moment and her mouth opens, before she remembers she is supposed to be being supportive and believing me. "I never would have pegged Damon for the scholarly type," she says, opening the book and flicking through the yellowed pages. "Um, he didn't happen to get around to translating the rest of it, did he?" She looks at the indecipherable words, a look of horror on her face.

I shake my head. The truth is I that am really very tired right now. I am desperate to sleep, if only so that I can touch Damon in my dreams, but for some reason, sleep won't come. I lie awake, tossing and turning, frustration and desperation filling me, because I know that Damon is waiting for me on the other side, in the darkness, waiting for me to come to him. But it doesn't matter. A couple of months ago, the thought of sleep filled me with dread, but now that I actually want to fall into a dream, my body isn't able to give in, even as my mind is screaming for me to relax. It's not fair, and I want to stamp my feet and cry buckets of tears. All I want to do is fall into a dream of me and Damon, and I can't. What's worse, is that I can't even use the awake time to concentrate on solving this current puzzle, because I am too tired to concentrate.

"Why didn't you ask Bonnie to translate it for you when you borrowed it?" Caroline asks me, and I cringe in anticipation.

"Um, maybe because, she doesn't know?" I say hesitantly.

"Elena, don't be ridiculous, of course she knows Latin!" Caroline rolls her eyes at me and my apparent stupidity. "Isn't this the language she mumbles under her breath whenever she does a spell?"

I sigh in defeat. "Actually, I meant that she doesn't know I borrowed the book."

"What? Elena, you _stole _this from her?" Caroline shrieks, her voice echoing through the room.

"No! I just, took it without asking her," I clarify.

Caroline narrows her eyes and points at me with the spine of the book. "That, Elena, is the dictionary definition of stealing!"

"I'm going to give it back to her!" I say, taking the book from her and flicking through the pages myself. "Just as soon as I work out what the damn thing says." I grumble under my breath.

Caroline's vampire hearing picks this up, and she sits down next to me on the couch. "You know," she begins, and I can tell by her tone that I am not going to enjoy the rest of this sentence. "Damon wasn't the only Salvatore to go to school in the 1800s." She raises her eyebrows at me pointedly, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes.

"I don't want Stefan involved in this. Not yet." I say firmly, looking down at the words in the book, willing them to change into a language I can actually read.

"But why? Elena, think about it, if you are right about all this, then Stefan is going to want to know. Damon _is_ his brother."

"Caroline, _you_ think about it, how is Stefan going to feel, knowing that I have been experiencing this kind of connection with Damon? Come on, that's only going to hurt him more than I already have." I look back at her, willing her to understand. "When Damon wakes up, he can find Stefan himself, and then their reunion won't be tainted with issues about me. I won't come between them." _At least not more than I already have_, I add on silently.

Caroline looks at me for a minute, before nodding her head slowly, and I breathe a silent sigh of relief. She stands up suddenly, looking about the room, and I gaze at her in confusion. "Where are you going?"

"This is a library, right?" She says to me, moving over to the bookshelves. "We should be able to find something in here that can help us translate that thing." She waves behind her to indicate the book in my hand, and then raises it up to run a finger along the spines lining the walls.

Again, Caroline has managed to think up a good solution. My concentration is just not what it used to be. I stand up and copy her, moving to the other side of the room and looking at the titles of the books, hoping to find some kind of translation guide for Latin. As I run my finger across the dusty spines of the books, I half-listen to Caroline, who is muttering under her breath about me making things harder for myself than they actually needed to be. _Is she right?_ I ask myself. I know I could probably get through translating this book a lot quicker if I had someone helping me who actually understood the language, but that would mean involving Bonnie. Although Damon had been able to read the title of the book, his Latin had been too rusty to help with any more than a few words on even the first page, and so I assume it would be the same for Stefan. Let's face it, the only people who even come into contact with the dead language these days are people whose job it affects, like doctors, or botanists, or historians... My mind skitters around that last thought. Historians! Alaric might be able to help me! But do I want him to help? Would he understand? I'm too tired to really make a good decision about this right now. A part of me wants to confide in Damon's best friend, to try and get as much help as possible. But there is another part of me that wants to hold on to the secrecy of it all for as long as possible. I had already taken a risk by telling Caroline. Could I afford to take another one? And this risk would be bigger. Alaric wasn't just a friend, he was a teacher, and my de-facto guardian. He was in a position to make things difficult for me, if it turned out he didn't believe me. He could call a doctor, or send me away to a mental hospital. Would he do something like that? Did I really know him well enough to know, one way or another? A part of my mind was screaming at me to trust him, but there was another part, that was whispering that it wasn't worth taking the chance. I wonder if the voice belongs to me or Damon. Then I wonder if it actually belongs to the voice that whispered to me at Bonnie's house.

A book to my right suddenly slides out from its place on the shelf and lands with a thump on the floor. I am certain that I hadn't touched it, so I stare down at the book, my spine tingling with nerves. _This one, _a voice whispers inside my head suddenly, and I jump slightly, turning around to scan the room. But there is nobody else there, except for Caroline, who is looking at me from across the room.

"Did you drop something?" She asks, stopping in her movements around the room.

"Um, I guess so," I say, not quite ready to voice the opinion that something weird might be going on. Caroline has only just about believed the fact that Damon might not be dead, so I doubt me saying _Hey, I think there's a ghost helping me out!,_ won't really go down too well. I bend down slowly and pick up the book, every muscle in my body tense, ready to jump at the slightest sound or movement. My senses are all on high alert, and for a moment, I swear I see the swish of a long black skirt out of the corner of my eye. I freeze, one hand stretched out to grab the book. The movement sparks a memory deep inside me, but I can't quite reach it.

"Elena, are you okay?" Caroline asks from across the room. "You're acting a little weird."

I grab the book and stand, curbing the desire to flick my eyes around the room, and instead look down at the tome in my hands. "I think I found something," I say, reading the title of the book. _De Rerum Natura._ As I turn the book to see the front cover, I realise that it is a translation of the epic poem "Of The Nature of Things," by Lucretius. I open the book, and to my delight, I see that it has the Latin on one side of the page, with the English translation on the other. "I think this will definitely help!" I say louder, looking to Caroline in excitement.

"Really?" We hurry towards each other, meeting at the desk in the middle, where I lay both the books down side by side on the surface. "Right then, I guess we get translating." Caroline pulled two chairs close to the desk and sat down, reaching for a pen and some paper. I do the same, and together we pour over the two books, scribbling down rough translations of the words from Bonnie's book. I try my best to concentrate, but my mind keeps wandering back to the flash of clothing I saw, and the disembodied voice that has whispered to me twice now.

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><p>"Right, that's it, I'm done." Caroline throws her pen down on the desk top; it bounces high and flies across the room. "Oops." The blond stands up, reaching her arms over her head as she stretches the kinks out of her back. "I really have to get home, my Mom will be wondering where I've been all day."<p>

I sigh and lean back in my seat, rubbing my hands over my face. "It's fine, I think we're pretty much done now, anyway." I pull the scraps of paper with our notes scribbled across them towards me, and gather them into a pile. "Thanks for helping me today, Caroline."

"No problem," Caroline picks up her bag and straightens out her clothes. "I'm not sure how much use it'll be though. It just seemed to be a story."

"I'll put it all together at home, I really should make dinner for Jeremy at least once this week." I join Caroline at the door to the library, my messenger bag filled with our notes, plus the two books. "Do you need a lift?"

"Yeah, thanks! That'll be great!"

"Hey, it's the least I could do."

I drop Caroline off at her house, with a promise to call her as soon as I figure anything out, and then head home to make a start on dinner. I find Jeremy and Alaric both ensconced in the living room, jeering at each other good naturedly as they play video games. I walk straight through to the kitchen and start pulling out pots and pans.

As I drop the freeze dried spaghetti into the boiling water and open the jar of sauce, I hear a snort behind me, and feel a tickle at the nape of my neck. I turn, a smile on my face, to see Damon leaning against the counter, staring in disgust at my non-homemade pasta. I don't say anything – I can't, not with both Jer and Ric just in the next room – I just pull a face at him, my gaze turning wistful as a memory surfaces, of coming home to a delicious smell and finding Damon in the kitchen, talking to Jenna as he made – from scratch – papardelle, with a tomato and garlic sauce. It had been one of the most sumptuous meals I had ever had. Not that I told him that, of course. Pain flitters through me, as I add that to the ever growing list of things I should have said to him.

"Uh, uh, none of that." Damon says, moving closer to me. "You'll figure it out. You're getting closer."

"Am I?" I whisper, keeping one eye on the door, watching for intruders.

"I can feel it," Damon whispers back, reaching out his hand to almost touch my breastbone. "You just don't know you know, yet. But you will."

I look up into his ice blue eyes and lose myself in them, wishing more than anything that I could reach up and throw my arms around him.

"Soon, love," he whispers to me, but before I can work out what he means, I hear foot steps behind me, and the beautiful mirage in front of me disappears.

"Is the spaghetti supposed to be in clumps?" Jeremy asks, poking at the pan with a wooden spoon.

I smack his hand away, then drain the pasta and stir the sauce, doing my best not to splatter myself with anything.

"Are we eating in the dining room?" Jer asks, a hopeful look in his eyes.

"No, it's okay, you can take it back into the living room," I say, grinning when I see the look of relief spread over his face.

"Cool!" He grabs the plate I've just fixed and picks up some cutlery. "Hey Ric! Dinner's ready!" He yells as he walks back towards the living room, a forkful of food already halfway to his mouth.

I fill a plate for Ric, then fix one for myself. I'm not hungry, but the plate of food in front of me should stop anyone from worrying about me. I realise I've become quite sneaky recently.

Sure enough, as Ric walks in and looks down at the meals in front of me, he nods in approval, muttering his thanks as he heads back to Jeremy. I pick up my own plate and grab my bag, heading upstairs, calling out to the boys that I'm going to try and do some homework. Hopefully that will keep them from checking on me.

As I walk into my room and put the plate of unappetising food down on the dresser, my eyes flick over to the window seat. It's empty, and my chest feels suddenly empty again. Since I have been researching and concentrating on my current problem, I have been able to forget that I feel this way. But it never disappears for long. It is as though there is a piece of me missing, and I know that until I find it again, I will never feel whole.

Sighing, I sit down on my bed and pull the notes and books out of my bag, spreading them around me. I spend the rest of the evening going over the notes, putting them in order, rechecking them against the Latin in the books.

Finally, I think I have done the best I can, and I lean back on my pillows to read.

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><p><em>From the void that was nothing, life sprang eternal.<em>

_But this was a mistake, something the Creator misjudged greatly. How could life be respected, if there was no end to it?_

_So the experiment was tried again, and this time, limits were placed upon the longevity of life._

_But the abominations from the first wave could not be squashed, and their anger over being replaced grew. They took their frustrations out on the children of the second wave, turning their fragile bodies against them, removing life far quicker than it should have been taken._

_The Creator, once it was realised that the children from the first wave could not be eradicated, tried to place limitations on them instead, as it had been done with the others. Decreased longevity had no effect, but the Creator did manage to place other restrictions upon them._

_In the interest of diversity and fairness, some He placed in the shadow of the moon, bound them to its eternal wisdom. With this added restriction, the children of the moon (as they soon became known by the children of the second wave) were able to behave like the others, only succumbing to their bestial nature on the nights the moon was fullest. Luck favoured the Creator, as the children of the moon eventually integrated themselves within the communities of the second wave, and as their life blood mingled, the eternal life once found so easily began to dilute, and wane._

_After a few hundred turnings of the earth, the leader of the children of the moon came to the Creator, apologising for his clan's earlier transgressions, and pleaded with Him to help them surpass the curse (as it was eventually known), so that they may fully become his adored children once more. The Creator agreed, and placed a further restriction upon them; from that point on, they need not be beholden to the moon's whim, unless they first transgressed against his favoured offspring._

_And thus, the werewolf was born, and the curse of the moon, should it befall them, would be by their own hand, and so the first half of the eternal ones were lost, at least in most parts of the world. There were others who remained, small clans of werewolves that were determined to keep up the old ways. At first, the Creator tried everything in His power to convert them, but to no avail. In time, He began to see their usefulness. His children needed something to fear, if they were truly to enjoy life. So He let them be, keeping an eye to ensure that they did not grow too large._

_But there the Creator's luck ran out. With the other half of the children of the first wave, He placed different limitations. These were instead made slaves to the sun. Unable to turn their faces towards the beauty of her eternal light, they were forced to move in the shadows alone. But unlike the werewolves, instead of pacifying the eternal beasts, this angered them further. In their rage, they found a way to bring children from the second wave over to their eternal darkness, creating yet more of the fearsome beasts. Close to despair, the Creator made one final adjustment to His accursed children. If death would not come to claim them, then they would have to be brought to the gates themselves. He fashioned stakes from the wood of ash trees, and tutored His children from the second wave in ways of using them. His favoured creations, enraged by the excess of fear placed upon them by the cursed ones' existence, went out in droves, finding the slaves to the sun and driving the stakes through their cold dead hearts. Many of them succeeded, and the rest of the children from the first wave retreated into the shadows, revealing themselves only when they were in need of sustenance. As with the clans of werewolves, the Creator let them be, as a warning to those who did not value life as they should._

_With the children of the first wave finally dispatched, the creator turned His attention to one last creation; that of the servant of nature. These beings were created with one sole purpose; to uphold the delicate balance between life and death, light and dark, good and evil. These creatures were blessed with mystical properties, abilities to control and manipulate the earth and all things that come from it. They were also blessed with an enhanced sense of morality, as the Creator had learned His lesson the first time. Creatures with mystical properties should be able to empathise with the beings they have the ability to manipulate._

_And so the Creator let them be to do their job, and left the world to its own devices._

_The servants of nature took pride in their work, and made sure that balance was kept between the elements of nature and mankind, for centuries._

_There came the occasional time however, when balance became harder to maintain, and so the witches (as they become known) devised a plan for an early warning system for their future generations. They created a supernatural occurrence, the birth of which would herald the coming of difficult times._

_This supernatural occurrence, also termed the doppelganger, was also given enhanced abilities, although nothing like what had been seen before. This human was to be born with extraordinary compassion, inner strength and beauty. With these abilities, not only would she be able to forewarn the servants of nature, but she would also be able to participate in the restoring of balance._

_In order to create this supernatural occurrence, the witches infused the bloodline of a gentle family with mystical properties, weaving their magic around the life blood of one young girl, wrapping their desires deep around the strings of life that brought the child into being. From that point onwards, each female child born from this family tree would have the ability to bring forth a doppelganger when she was needed._

_But this complicated weaving of spells and enchantments created abilities the witches did not expect, and could not reverse. The slaves to the sun were drawn to her, the blood within her calling to them like birdsong on a gentle breeze. Out of the hordes that would converge upon her, all would want to gorge themselves on her blood, as the essence of life itself ran through her veins. Her heart, as it beat with the vitality of life, would haunt them throughout the time of the sun's rays, bringing them from slumber, torturing them with the sense of life being just within their reach._

_So the witches created another enhancement for the doppelganger. They forged within her soul the ability to converse with the children of the shadows; to reach past the haze of their blood lust and touch the part within them that the Creator had thought was buried too deep to find. But they also gave her free will, and so the doppelganger truly owned her own heart, and was able to give it to whomever she chose. Whomever was lucky enough to be bestowed with such wonder, would no longer have the need of his own heart, for hers would beat for him alone._

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><p>I sigh as I let my eyes scan over the pages of writing. Dejection washes over me, as I struggle to work out if any of this could possibly help Damon. I want to cry. Again. Because this situation is impossible and I'm so tired and I can't concentrate and I feel so <em>incomplete.<em>

"You need to sleep," Damon says, and I look up to find him sitting in his usual place.

"I wish I could," I sigh, scrubbing my hands over my face, my fingers grabbing slightly at my hair in my desperation. "I can't concentrate!" I burst out, kicking the pile of papers away from me in a sudden surge of anger.

"Have you got anything you can take? To help you get to sleep?" Damon asks, not moving from the window seat.

I peek over at him from between my fingers. He always tries to keep his distance when I am awake, as though he is afraid of reminding me that I can't touch him. As if I can forget. And I want to touch him. I want to feel his arms wrap around me as he brushes his lips against my hair so _badly_ that I feel I might explode with need.

"Will I still be able to dream about you?" I ask, chewing on my lower lip. I want to sleep, but mainly I want to so that I can be with Damon.

He shrugs, a small tugging at his lips. "There's only one way to find out."

I contemplate this for a moment, and then sigh deeply. At the very least, a good night's sleep might help me to concentrate better in the morning. I nod at him, and get up from the bed, heading over to the bathroom. The quicker I get this problem solved, the quicker all my dreams will come true.

Rooting around in the medicine cabinet, I come across an old pill bottle I had been given after my parents had died. Unlike the pain medication, Jeremy hadn't swallowed all these, so a few of the heavy duty sleeping pills still remained. Taking one out of the bottle, I wash the pill down my throat with some water from the tap, then head back into the bedroom. I clear away all the stuff on my bed, shoving it back into my bag, and settle back against the pillows.

"Will you stay here with me?" I ask him. "At least, until this works?"

"Always," he replies softly, and I smile, closing my eyes.

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><p>The sleeping pill does weird things to my mind, and I'm not transported back to the Boarding House and into Damon's arms as usual. Damon <em>is<em> there, but faded, as though he is too far away, or perhaps hidden by a veil. I try to reach out to him, but the dream changes before my fingers can take hold, and I cry out in anguish.

I find myself in a field, surrounded on all sides by trees, and as I look around I sense that there is someone standing close by. I turn on the spot, and standing behind me is a woman. As she lifts her face to settle her brown eyed gaze on my own, a jolt of recognition shoots through me.

"I know you," I whisper, and suddenly I know who owns the voice that whispered to me.

"Ssh, child," she says quietly. "We don't have much time."

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><p>I am trying to wake up, fighting against the cotton wool that has adhered itself to the inside of my skull, courtesy of the sleeping pill. I had forgotten that this was a side effect of taking the drug; it was difficult to focus on much for a while afterwards. Images of the dreams I had had filter through my mind, reminding me of the job I had to do. There is something there, something I'm not quite understanding, the missing piece of the puzzle. I know now that once I find that last remaining piece, everything will fall into place, and I am anxious to get started.<p>

"She's still sleeping, why don't you wait unt-"

Jeremy's voice floats to me through the fog surrounding my mind, his sentence cut off short by someone interrupting him angrily.

"I know she stole that book, Jeremy, and I don't care if she's sleeping, I'm going to get it back!"

My bedroom door is pushed open with such force that it bounces off the wall behind it, and I hear Bonnie as she stomps over to the side of my bed. I am incredibly grateful that right now I can't seem to open my eyes. Maybe she'll go away and come back later if she thinks I'm still deeply asleep.

"Elena, wake up! I know you took that book! Where is it?"

No such luck. I want to respond, or maybe turn over and snuggle further under the quilt, but the medicine is still working its effects on me.

"Elena!" Bonnie shouts, and then I feel my shoulder being shaken roughly. And then... "Elena?" She asks, her voice a lot quieter, and I feel her hands as they flutter over my arms, her fingers coming to rest on my wrist. "Elena?" She shouts louder. "Oh my God! Elena! Jeremy!" She screams, her hands back on my shoulders as she shakes me roughly.

What the hell is wrong with her?

I hear a thump as Jeremy skids into the room, and I hear him breathlessly ask, "What?"

"Jeremy, oh my God, call an ambulance!" I feel wet drops splash on my face as I hear Bonnie take in a shaky breath. "She's got no heartbeat!"

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><p><strong>AN: Yup, another cliffie. I know, I'm evil! I'll tell you what, I'll do my best to get the next chapter up as soon as I can, and you leave a review? Deal? ;)**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Well, this took me longer than I thought it would! It wasn't really my fault, I was just so blown away by the latest episode, that I was literally struck dumb for a while. DE kissed! OMG, it was epic, and I still haven't stopped fangirl squealing over it! My husband's starting to think there's something wrong with me, LOL! Anyway, here it is, the last chapter before the epilogue, although it's probably going to be chapter length, so you'll still get a good read out of it (hopefully).**

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><p><strong><em>Acceptance: The act of assenting or believing in a theory or situation.<em>**

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><p>"<em>She's got no heartbeat!"<em>

Well that's weird. I'm lying here and thinking about how stupid that sentence is, plus the fact that I can feel myself breathing, so I must have a heartbeat. Bonnie just probably can't find it, which just goes to show how useless that first aid training she took actually was.

With a huge mental effort to get out from under the effects of the sleeping pill, I manage to open first one bleary eye, then the other. Of course, when I do, neither Bonnie nor Jeremy are looking at me, so they continue to needlessly panic. Bonnie is kneeling down by my bedside, her face in her hands, crying loudly. Jeremy is busy dialling 911 on his cell phone, one hand clutching at his hair as he paces the floor just inside my bedroom door. Clearly, I'm going to have to do something to clear this stupid mess up.

Slowly, still fighting to get out from under the medically induced fog, I move my hand over to touch Bonnie, at the same time opening my mouth to speak.

"Mm okay," I choke out through parched lips, as my fingers flutter over my friend's hair.

"Elena?" Bonnie looks up at me in disbelief, before shrieking my name out again. "Elena! Oh my God, you're okay! What happened? Jeremy, she's okay!"

My brother looks over at me, relief evident in his eyes. "Do you need to see a doctor?" He asks me, still holding up his cell phone. When I shake my head slightly, he says distractedly in the direction of the mouthpiece, "False alarm, sorry," before hanging up and rushing over to me.

My brain starts kicking in, and I curse the stupid sleeping pill for making my head so fuzzy. I decide to throw the rest away. Nothing is worth feeling like you've been run over by a truck, not even a few hours decent sleep. I put my arms up to hug Jeremy as he bounces on the bed next to me, and as I sit up I feel Bonnie's arms come around us both, and we all sit there for a moment, tangled up in each other, as Jeremy runs his hands up and down my back, as though convincing himself I really am okay, and Bonnie sobs into my shoulder. I guess I can't really blame them for over reacting; we have had to deal with a lot of really crappy stuff recently, so jumping to the worst conclusion is actually pretty natural.

Eventually though, I manage to extricate myself from the group hug, not least because I feel uncomfortable being in the middle of two people who are dating. I clear my throat, wishing for a drink of water. "Well, that was an interesting way to wake up," I say, hoping to lighten the mood.

It seems to work; Bonnie shudders out a laugh and Jeremy groans with embarrassment.

"I thought, maybe you did something," Bonnie says, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. "To yourself, I mean."

I'd be lying if I said that thought had never crossed my mind in recent weeks. In fact, every morning when I woke up, I would think about it, just for a moment, because I would let a moment of doubt seep in, wonder if I wasn't just being delusional, and wonder if dying would bring me to him. But the thought never lasts for longer than a second. It doesn't matter how much pain I am in, Jeremy needs me, and I would never leave him alone like that. Damon would understand that.

"Bonnie, you should know me better than that," I say. "Why would you think I would do something like that?"

Bonnie points to the bottle of pills on my bedside table. "The bottle is almost empty," she whispers, not looking at me, and not really answering my question.

A part of me wonders if my behaviour has really been that bad recently that my best friend would think I would harm myself, but the bigger part whispers back, reminding me that if I'd thought of it, then maybe it's not so much of a stretch that others would see it in me.

"They're just sleeping pills, Bonnie," I say, shrugging as I reach over and pick up the small bottle. "I've had them for ages, there's not many left." I get up from the bed and walk into the bathroom, pulling the stopper out and tipping the contents down the toilet. I throw the empty bottle in the bin and walk back out to the bedroom. "They really knock you out, and not in a nice way. I don't think I'll bother with them anymore."

Jeremy gets up from the bed and walks over to the door, trailing his fingers across my shoulder as he passes me. "Well, now that the daily drama is over, I think I'm gonna go make breakfast," he says, a small smile on his face.

I nod at him, then turn to Bonnie, slightly annoyed that she would scare my brother like that for no good reason. I don't really blame her though, so I try to hold my temper in, knowing it wasn't her fault.

"I don't understand it," she whispers, looking at me from her position at the edge of my bed. "You didn't have a heartbeat..."

She trails off, and I roll my eyes slightly. "Then you probably just weren't doing it right, Bon, because I was right there. I heard everything you were saying, I just couldn't wake up quickly enough to tell you I was fine."

She shoots a mild glare at me as she crosses her arms over her chest. "I did first aid Elena, I know how to check for a person's heartbeat, and you didn't have one."

"Bonnie, how long is it since you took that course?" I move back into the bathroom; my mouth still feels dry and yucky, and I want to brush my teeth and get in the shower.

"Elena, I am telling you, you didn't have a heartbeat!" I look back at her, to find she was on her feet, staring at me as though I was some kind of medical miracle.

I roll my eyes again and walk back into the bedroom, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Go on then," I say, holding my arm out in front of me. "Check it again. You'll see that my heart is still beating just fine, just like it was a few minutes ago."

Bonnie breathes out an irritable sigh and purses her lips at me. "That's not going to make any difference, Elena, because even if I feel your pulse now, it doesn't mean that you had one a few minutes ago when I first checked!"

"Maybe not, but it might make you feel better." I waggle my arm at her, giving her an impish smile.

She looks at me for a moment, then sighs and sits down on the bed next to me, taking my wrist between her finger tips, holding up her other arm to check her watch instinctively. I'll admit it, I'm impressed, she looks just like the professional nurses in the hospital.

Her face quickly develops a frown, however, and her fingers move slightly on my wrist. After another moment, she turns me to face her squarely, and her fingers come up to the pulse point at my neck. Her breath starts coming in short spurts as her fingers move around my neck, before she finally places her palm against my chest, right above my heart.

And then she stops moving completely. It's like she's frozen, all except her eyes, which slowly trip up from my chest to my face. When her gaze finally locks onto mine, I see horror, and not a little fear.

"Oh my God," she whispers, and then in a blur of movement she jumps up and away from me.

"Bonnie?" I ask uncertainly, not understanding what has her so scared.

She stares at me, looking so hard that it seems as though she's trying to set me on fire with her brain.

"You're... You're a vampire," she says finally.

I stare at her in shock for a moment, and then let out an incredulous laugh. "Bonnie! No I'm not! Why would you say that?"

"Elena, you have no heartbeat. You must have been turned..." She trails off, looking at me with a mixture of revulsion and sorrow on her face.

"Bonnie, I haven't been anywhere near a vampire in weeks, how could I have been turned?" I say, confused as to why she would jump to this conclusion. I do have a heartbeat, she just can't find it!

"I don't know, something must have happened, maybe you were compelled..." She can't seem to finish her sentences, and now I'm starting to lose my temper.

"Bonnie, you're being ridiculous! I'm sitting here in the sunlight, for God's sake! I'm not wearing any daylight jewellery!"

As I shake my arms at her to prove my point, I notice her gaze going down to my other wrist. I look down, and notice the bracelet that Damon gave me for my birthday.

_He wouldn't. Would he? No, absolutely not. Besides, why would he make a daylight bracelet for me when I was still human?_

I fumble with the clasp of the bracelet, not wanting to take it off, but needing to prove to Bonnie that I'm still human. I haven't taken it off since the day I found it in Damon's wardrobe, and I feel a moment's pain as I let it drop onto the bed sheets.

"See?" I say, standing up and moving closer to the window, holding my arms out wide as I stand in the sunlight. "Nothing. No reaction. I'm fine, Bonnie, really."

She still doesn't relax, and I slap my arms down to my sides in frustration. "Bonnie, touch me," I plead with her, taking a step closer. "You can sense vampires when you touch them, right?"

She nods her head jerkily, her gaze bouncing from me to the door. She stands frozen for a moment, then seems to steel herself, and walks towards me. She puts her hand on my shoulder, holding herself stiffly, but after a moment she relaxes.

"You're still human," she breathes out, relief evident in her voice. Before I can say anything though, she frowns again.

"What is it?"

"There's... something... different..." she says haltingly, closing her eyes as she tries to sense more. I stand there impatiently, wondering what the hell is going on. Finally, she opens her eyes, her confusion evident.

"Well?" I demand.

"I don't know," she says, gazing at me as though she's never seen me before. "It's like, you're not completely here. It's like there's a piece of you missing."

And that's when it hits me. Everything I've felt, everything I've thought, everything I read in the translation. And the dream. I clap my hand to my mouth as realisation crashes over me, wave upon wave. Finally I know. I know what's been happening, and I know how to fix it.

"I have to go," I say suddenly, moving away from Bonnie back into the bathroom. "Can you see yourself out?"

"Elena? What's going on?"

I can't deal with her right now. She can't help me right now. The only person who can help is Caroline.

* * *

><p>Bonnie isn't happy when I send her away, but right now, I can't muster up the energy to care. I have to do this, now. Everything else can wait.<p>

Once I have gotten rid of her, I run through my daily morning routine in the bathroom, leaving my hair wet down my back instead of ironing it straight. As I rummage through my wardrobe for something to wear, I call Caroline from my cell phone. It clicks over to voicemail, so I leave her a message, telling her to come and meet me. I clip the bracelet back onto my wrist, grab my bag with the book and translation still stuffed inside, and run down the stairs and out of the door, praying that I will find everything I will need when I get there.

I pull my car into the overgrown driveway of the old Salvatore House, looking around at the rubble strewn between the raging weeds. I get out of the car, grabbing the translation out of my bag. I'll need this to convince Caroline. I walk slowly to the Salvatore mausoleum, wondering slightly how this building managed to stay upright and perfectly maintained, while the rest of the buildings had slowly crumbled away to nothing. Maybe the Salvatore descendents had made sure to look after it, look after the inhabitants. I push open the wooden door, and look down upon the stone coffins lying there, dust motes swirling in the light coming from behind me. I step forward and reach out, placing my palm against the lid above where Damon is lying. "Soon," I whisper. And then I step back outside to wait for Caroline.

It takes about an hour, during which I sit in the sunshine and reread the translation, committing it to memory. Eventually though, I hear a car pull up on the other side of the once beautiful house, and I look up, watching for the vampire's blond head to come around the corner. I miss it completely though, because she vamp-speeds towards me, crouching down beside me in worry.

"Are you okay? I got here as soon as I could," she pants, even though she no longer needs to breathe.

I look down and note with surprise that she is wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and some Nike trainers, and I realise that I must have sounded desperate in my voicemail. Normally, Caroline wouldn't be seen dead outside without her outfit properly accessorized. Although now, she has.

"I'm fine, Caroline." I stand up excitedly. Now that she is here, I can get started. "I've worked it out. I know how to fix it." I hold out the papers with the translation written on them, my hand shaking from nerves.

She frowns at me as she takes them from me, then starts to read. Her frown deepens as she gets to the last part, the part about the doppelganger. The part about me. Finally, she looks up. "I don't get it," she says, the frown not leaving her face.

"Listen for a minute," I say, pulling the door to the crypt closed temporarily. "What can you hear?"

"What?" She asks, looking at me as though I've lost my mind.

"Just listen, Care! What do you hear?"

"I... I hear lots of stuff! I can hear the birds, and the stream nearby, and the cars on the road, and –"

"I mean with me," I interrupt her. "What do you hear when you listen to me, to my body?"

"Well, obviously, I can hear your..." Her voice trails off as alarm starts to spread over her face. She grabs me and looks into my eyes, and I roll them, trying to shrug her off.

"I'm not a vampire, Caroline!"

"Then why can't I hear your heart beating?" She asks, hysteria making her voice squeak.

"Because it's not beating for me right now." I say simply, a huge grin coming over my face.

"What the hell does that mean?"

I wince slightly, as her grip on my arm gets harder, and she lets me go, still staring at me in shock and confusion. I walk back to the door and push it open again, reaching behind me to pull her in after me. When we are standing next to Damon, I turn to look at her.

"Now what can you hear?"

"Elena, what are we... Oh my God." Caroline's voice trails off in amazement as her gaze slides down to rest on the top of the coffin.

"It's beating for him." I say, my conviction clear in my voice.

"But... but that's... that's not possible!" She stutters, staring down at the stone lid as though the answers were inscribed across it.

"And I know how to fix it," I whisper, biting my lip, impatience starting to get the better of me.

"How?" Caroline's voice is full of wonder as she stares at me.

"There's a... ritual I have to do, Charlotte told me –"

"_Who?_"

I realise I haven't told Caroline about my dream. "Listen, just help me get him back to the Boarding House, I promise I will explain everything," I plead, desperate now to get Damon out of the stone box and back in the world. With me.

Caroline, my best friend, the only person who I could trust with the complete truth, nods at me, and I feel such a rush of love for her that I reach out and pull her to me, hugging her close. "Thank you," I whisper under my breath, as tears of gratitude leak out from under my lashes.

She pats me on the back lightly, then pulls away and looks down at the lid. "Well, we might as well get this over with," she says and reaches down to grab hold of the heavy stone. In one movement, she lifts the lid up and away from the coffin, and we both look down into it. He is lying there, looking just the same as he did when Stefan buried him here, believing him to be dead. I marvel slightly about the fact that there were two vampires and a werewolf here that day, and yet I was the only one to notice the sound of the heartbeat coming from inside the mausoleum. I wish I'd known back then that I was actually sealing my own heartbeat away.

He looks so peaceful, and so beautiful, the black of his suit and hair against the stark white of the silk lining accentuating his perfect marble skin. I reach out and stroke my hand down his face, unsurprised to find that his skin is warm to the touch.

"It's weird," Caroline mutters quietly.

"What is?" I ask. There are any number of things about this that could be described as weird, so I need further clarification.

"I can hear your heartbeat coming from his chest," she explains, looking down at Damon in amazement. "But it sounds different. Like hollow? I don't know, like his heart isn't actually beating, it's just the sound echoing in an empty space? It's weird."

I try to work out what it means, but it's too complicated, and all I can do is agree. It's weird.

"Come on. We need to get him back to the Boarding House," I say, straightening up and letting Caroline closer so she can pick him up. We make our way back to our cars, and as she gently lays Damon in the backseat of hers, I climb into mine, and we all make our way along the short journey back home.

* * *

><p>"Right, now you have to explain what it is that you're going to do."<p>

We are in the Salvatore kitchen, Caroline sitting on the counter while I search for ingredients in the cupboards. I smile as I unearth the herbs and special oil that I once saw Stefan put away. They were magical herbs; Bonnie's grandmother Sheila had given them to him after he saved her granddaughter from the tomb site. Apparently, they were typical herbs used in magical spells and rituals. I was glad I hadn't had to ask Bonnie for these.

"Elena? You are going to explain, right?" Caroline's trainers bounce off the cupboards below her as she swings her legs in frustration at my silence.

I arrange the jars of herbs and oil on the counter next to the books and papers from my bag, and then get another empty jar and place it next to them all. Then I take a deep breath and turn to Caroline.

"I had a dream last night."

* * *

><p><em>I find myself in a field, surrounded on all sides by trees, and as I look around I sense that there is someone standing close by. I turn on the spot, and standing behind me is a woman. As she lifts her face to settle her brown eyed gaze on my own, a jolt of recognition shoots through me.<em>

"_I know you," I whisper, and suddenly I know who owns the voice that whispered to me._

"_Ssh, child," she says quietly. "We don't have much time."_

"_You're Katherine," I say, but as I look at her closer, I know that's not right. The look she is giving me is warm, caring, almost fond._

_She smiles at me and shakes her head. "I am the original," she whispers. "My name is Charlotte."_

"_I'm Elena," I whisper back, and blush as she smiles again._

"_I know. I know everything there is to know about you, Elena Gilbert. We're linked; magic binds us together in the most basic of ways. You are all my children, all the doppelgangers who came after me."_

"_I'm lost," I say, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I can stop them. "I'm so lost without him. I need him. I love him."_

"_That's why I'm here," Charlotte reaches out a hand, but her fingers pass straight through my arm. I feel the comforting gesture though, and it's enough to keep the tears at bay._

"_I am right, aren't I?" I ask. "Damon is still alive somehow? I'm not going mad?"_

"_No, child, you're not mad. It's part of our magic. You had the power to keep him with you, and you did."_

"_How?"_

"_Did you not read the book I pointed you to? It tells you how."_

_I think back to the translation of the book I had been reading before I feel asleep, and phrases pop out from my memory._

But they also gave her free will, and so the doppelganger truly owned her own heart, and was able to give it to whomever she chose.

_I speak the words out loud to Charlotte, who joins in, reciting the words as though she wrote them herself. Maybe she did. When I stop though, she continues, her quiet voice resonating with the power of the words._

"_Once her heart was freely given, it would beat for her beloved alone, calling only to him, keeping him with her, wherever she may go."_

_I listen to the words I hadn't yet translated. I still don't understand._

_Before I can say anything though, Charlotte glances around her and then leans in closer to me._

"_We haven't got much time. I must tell you what to do."_

_The wind picks up as she gives me instructions, tangling our identical hair together, swirling her long black skirt against my pyjama clad legs. As soon as she is finished, she fades, her voice lingering on the wind whipping around me._

"_Do not fret, my child. You will be whole again soon."_

* * *

><p>I look up at Caroline as I finish recounting my dream, seeing a look of total amazement etched onto her face.<p>

"Will you help me?" I ask, biting my lip nervously.

"Are you sure this will work?" Caroline looks back at me hesitantly. "I mean, it was just a dream, Elena. How do you know you didn't just make it up in your head?"

"It will work," I say confidently, but I know I can't even begin to explain how I know this.

Caroline sighs, then takes a deep breath. Her eyes fill up with red, and veins pop out underneath, and she snarls as her fangs protrude. I pick up the empty jar as she bites down into her wrist, crying out in pain as her teeth sink into her flesh. She takes the jar from me and hold it under the wound, collecting her blood as it drips off her arm. The wound heals quickly, and then she passes the jar back to me.

"When are you going to do it?" She asks, as her face slowly turns back into her human visage.

I put the stopper back into the jar and gather up the rest of the ingredients. "Now."

"Do you want me to stay with you?"

"No." I shake my head firmly. This all started with Damon and me, and that is how it should end.

"Are you sure?"

I smile at my friend. "I'll be fine, Caroline. The worst that can happen is that this doesn't work."

"But maybe that's exactly why I should be here," Caroline bites her lip, looking apprehensively at me. "I can just stay down here..." Her voice trails off as she sees my determined expression, and she sighs.

"Thank you, Caroline," I say, pulling her into my arms, trying to tell her through the hug just how much I am thankful to her for. I think maybe she gets it, because when we break apart, her eyes are filled with tears.

"Call me, okay?" She says as she walks towards the front door.

I nod, and wait until the door has closed behind her, and then I go up the stairs to find him.

* * *

><p>Damon is lying on his bed, still in the ridiculous suit that Stefan thought to dress him in for his funeral, complete with incongruous shiny black shoes. I walk over to the bed and run my fingers through his hair, sitting down next to him and pulling his journal and pen out of my bag. Turning to a clean page, I write a note to Jeremy, just in case this doesn't work. He needs to know why I had to try. When I am done, I close the book, putting a piece of the blue ribbon between the pages so it can easily be found. Then, I lean over Damon and kiss his lips lightly, caressing his cheek with my palm. I look down at him for a moment, and I pray with everything that I am that this works, and I get him back. And then I get up off the bed and walk into the bathroom, ready to carry out the instructions Charlotte had given me.<p>

I take off my top and stand there in my bra, looking at myself in the mirror. I look different suddenly. The dark circles under my eyes are gone, as is the slightly downward turn of my lips that has graced my mouth the past few weeks. My hair is wavy from the shower this morning, and my eyes sparkle with something I didn't think I'd ever get back. Hope.

I pull the ingredients out of my bag one by one, arranging them on the counter around the sink. Using a small dish I had found in the kitchen, I carefully mix the herbs and the oil together, forming a paste. Then, I take out the stopper of the jar with Caroline's blood, and slowly drop the substance into the mixture. When it is done, I dip my finger into the paste and swirl it around, coating my finger with the viscous liquid. Then I raise it up to my chest and slowly start to draw a symbol, right above my heart.

First, I draw a sideways figure of eight. _The Ouroboros, representing sentience._

Next, I draw two straight lines, one above, and one below. _Parallelism, representing the forces against which life must overcome._

Finally, I draw an oval around the outside. _Infinity, representing knowledge and what we have yet to learn._

It's the symbol of life.

I look back in the mirror, watching as the symbol drawn on my chest brightens for a moment, before it starts to fade, sinking into my skin. I pull my top back on and walk back into the bedroom. I don't know how long this will take, and I want to be with him if this all goes wrong. Because I left something out when I recounted my dream to Caroline. In order for this to work, I have to die. My life force has to be expelled, so that it can merge with Damon's. I have to give up my life, in order to give him back his.

I don't get too far into the bedroom before I feel dizzy. I can't breathe in, it feels as though there are tight bands wrapped around my chest. I stumble towards the bed, but my legs give way and I fall to the floor. As the world goes dark around me, I hope that this will work. _This has to work_. The last thing I see as I collapse onto the floor is him. The missing piece of me.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Wow, people keep dying in this story don't they? Sorry about that! Also, sorry for the lack of DE interaction in this chapter, but Elena really needed to work this all out by herself. Please don't hate me for killing them both! Epilogue will be up in a few days, but I haven't written it yet, so if you want a happy ending, you'll have to leave a review to tell me! ;)**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: So, this took me longer than I thought it would! I got a bit stuck, wanting this chapter to be just perfect, and I didn't like anything I wrote. But, I finished finally, and I am pleased with the result, and I hope you are too! I want to thank you all for coming on this journey with me, I have been overwhelmed by all the reviews I have gotten for this story. You know what I would love? I would absolutely love it if everybody who has story alerted this would leave me a review, just a little one, to tell me what you thought of the story as a whole? Even if it's just a one word one, it would really mean so much to me!**

**Anyway, I'll shut up now, and let you read. So here it is, the final installment of The Missing Piece of Me:**

* * *

><p><strong>"<em>So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life." – John Milton.<em>**

**"_If our two loves be one, or thou and I/Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die." – John Donne._**

**"_Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too,/ So I stayed in the darkness with you." – Florence and the Machine, Cosmic Love._**

* * *

><p>I hate the dark. Actually, that's not true. I love the dark, because usually that means that whatever human I am chasing can't see anywhere near as well as I can, which makes the chase just that little bit more amusing. To me, anyway. What I don't like, is pitch black, because then even I can't see, and that makes me nervous. And I don't do nervous. Yes, even vampires need a little bit of light in order to see anything.<p>

I feel like I have been stuck somewhere dark for weeks. I can feel panic clawing at my throat. I feel as though I have been drowning, and am currently fighting my way to the surface, even though I can tell I'm not moving.

I really don't like this feeling.

I need a drink.

With a gasp I finally manage to wrench open my eyes, blinking furiously as I struggle to work out where I am, my mind trying to sense out any danger that I might be in. I launch upwards into a sitting position, my eyes darting around the room, my heartbeat slowly returning to normal as I take in the familiar surroundings of my own room.

The house is deathly quiet, the only sound my own ragged breathing, as I sit here trying to get my mind to focus. It's a lot more difficult to do than it usually is. Maybe that damned werewolf bite did some permanent damage to my concentration abilities.

My head shoots up. Now I remember. I've been bitten. Maybe this is just a rare lucid moment between bouts of hallucinations and general insanity. I pull up the sleeve of my left arm, frowning as I notice I am dressed in a black suit. Did someone think I was sweating too much and decide to dress me up like I'm off to the theatre? I leave that thought where it is for the moment, and look down at the crook of my elbow, cringing as I ready myself for how bad the bite has gotten. It's gone. I smooth my hand over the area, disbelief raising my eyebrows.

How the hell..?

But then I remember. Stefan had said something about trying to find a cure. Had there really been one to find? And then... what? Had everyone just left me here to recover all by myself? Typical. I roll my eyes. How could I think anything different? They were probably all gathered together right now, wondering whether saving me had been the right thing to do, discussing it all like the good little white hats they are. But still, I can't stop myself from straining my ears to see if I can hear movement downstairs. There's nothing. Of course. Why should it matter to any of them if I recover or not?

I swing my legs over the side of the bed I'm closest to, wincing as my feet touch the ground. Why in fucking hell would they put these shoes on me? I look down at the polished black leather in horror. I hate shoes. I only ever wear boots. I have one pair of shoes that I wear when I absolutely _have_ to dress up, and these aren't even them. Someone must have really had to root around in my closet to find these things. Scowling at the invasion of privacy – and yes, for some reason this annoys me even more than someone else fucking _dressing_ me, which is just weird in and of its own damned self – I toe off the shoes, flicking them across the room, and stand up.

My body shakes a bit when I let go of the bed, like all my muscles have seized up and are protesting about being used again. I guess this cure will take a while before it gets me back up to full strength. I shrug off my jacket – seriously, why the hell would anyone dress me up like this? – and take a few steps forward, testing the strength of my legs.

It's not good, apparently, because my legs buckle beneath me, and suddenly I'm on all fours, my cheek pressed against the cold wooden floor. Dust flies up around me and I sneeze, then slowly pull my head up from the floor. Why is there dust? I straighten my arms carefully, my elbows shaking with the pressure of holding up my weight, and I start panting from the exertion. Okay, this is going to get very old, very fast. Gritting my teeth, I slowly start crawling towards the wardrobe, incredibly grateful that I have actually been left alone at this point, because the embarrassment factor of being seen like this would just be the mouldy icing on top of this very bad cake. It feels like it takes forever for me to get there, and when I do, I have to roll on my side to catch my breath for a minute.

As I'm lying there, my eyes snag on a piece of blue cloth, hiding just out of sight beneath the plinth of the wardrobe. I inch my fingers towards it, and I frown in confusion as I pull out a length of dark blue ribbon. I don't know how that got there. I sit up slowly, blowing out a breath in relief as my movements seem to be easing up slightly. I reach up from the floor, still not willing to test my legs again, and pull open the doors, shuffling out of the way as I pull them wide. From my vantage point, the first thing I see is the base of the wardrobe, and my eyes narrow as I realise that someone has moved all my things around. My gaze falls on an upended bag shoved in the corner, and my eyes widen as I drop my head to look at the piece of ribbon still clutched between my fingers.

As I look from the piece of ribbon to the empty bag, the only surviving remnants of the presents I had carefully hidden away, thoughts of her flood my mind. She had said she wasn't leaving. She told me she was staying until the very end. She told me she liked me, just the way I am. She _kissed_ me. But she had left, hadn't she? Surely, the very end would have been when I finally woke up from whatever cure they had given me, but she isn't here, is she? Or is she? I strain my ears again, hoping to hear something from somewhere within the depths of the house. But still there is nothing nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat.

Wait. Heartbeat? Since when do I have one of those?

I look down at my chest, and slowly raise my hand to press it against my breastbone. Sure enough, the telltale _thump thump, thump thump,_ of a heart long since silent, reverberates through the thin material of my shirt and into my palm. My breathing ratchets up a notch at this discovery, and then again as I realise that I am honest to fucking God _breathing!_ I'm actually breathing, and through necessity, not just an unforgettable habit. I look down at the shaft of sunlight in which I am currently sitting, and then I look at the ring on my finger. Slowly, carefully, I slide the ring down my finger, my muscles tensed and ready to roll me in the direction of the shadows at the first sign of burning. The ring slips out of my trembling fingers and bounces on the wooden floor, rolling to a stop a few feet from me, knocking against something on the floor. I wince, waiting for the feeling of being on fire, holding my breath with my eyes screwed up, wincing in advance of the agony I will surely feel at any moment. But there is nothing. I open my eyes slowly, disbelief making my head spin. Oh no, wait, that's the lack of oxygen. I exhale and suck in another breath quickly, chuckling slightly at the bizarrely _natural_ feel of it.

I'm human.

How the hell did _that_ happen?

I glance over to where the ring that I no longer need to wear has come to a stop, and that's when I notice it. The tip of a brown boot is just visible on the other side of the bed. _Her_ boot.

* * *

><p>Time freezes as I stare at it, my brain refusing to acknowledge what it signifies. Because <em>that<em> cannot be possible.

Suddenly, without conscious thought, I lurch to my feet, stumbling over to the other side of the bed. As I look down at the crumpled body lying on my bedroom floor, I hear a strange keening sound, like a wounded animal. I fall to my knees beside her, and I realise the noise is coming from me.

"Elena?" I try to say, but my throat is dry and cracked from disuse, and her name falls from my lips in a raspy whisper. I reach my hands out to her hesitantly, placing them on her shoulders, shaking her slightly.

"Elena, wake up!" I rasp out, panic and pain seizing my chest, my breath coming in short gasps. "No! Elena!" I shout, shaking her more violently as she doesn't respond.

My finger tips flutter around her neck, looking for a bite wound, or an injury, or a pulse. But there is nothing.

I don't understand. She would look just like she is sleeping, if it wasn't for the way her legs are bent in an uncomfortable position, or that her skin wasn't so pale, or her lips weren't tinged with blue. My hands travel down the rest of her body, checking her ribs, her spine, her stomach. But there is nothing. No sign of anything happening to her. She looks like she just fell where she stood.

As my fingers continue their feverish exploration of her lifeless body, I encounter something around her left wrist. I lift her arm, and to my shock, I see the bracelet that I had wrapped, intending to give it to her as a birthday present. As my eyes fall on the piece of blue ribbon I had discarded as I fell beside her, a synapse fires in my brain, and I plunge into a memory.

* * *

><p>"<em>You're not really here, are you?" She whispers, her eyes clenched tightly shut.<em>

"_No, I'm not," I say, rubbing my hand down her arm. It feels so natural, me touching her, comforting her. "I wish I was."_

"_Then why does this feel so real?" Tears leak out from between her lashes, and I think my heart might actually break from witnessing her pain._

"_I think you have to figure that out by yourself." I pick her up smoothly from the floor beside my wardrobe, and carry her over to the bed, laying her down gently. I start to remove my hands, but her arm shoots out, her fingers latching on to me._

"_Can you just... Can you just stay here with me? Just for a little while?"_

"_I will do whatever you need me to do, Elena." I always have. I always will. I lay my jacket over her, and lay down beside her, wrapping my arm around her waist. I hold her tightly, listening to her breathing as she falls asleep, listening to the sound of her heartbeat as it thumps against my ribs. As her breathing evens out, the room around me darkens, and I fade into nothingness._

* * *

><p>The memory falls away and I find myself back in my room, one hand clutching her wrist, the other gently smoothing her wavy hair away from her face. I frown down at the bracelet, unable to understand what the hell is going on. I don't remember that happening before I was bitten, and it sure as hell hadn't happened since I woke up. So the why does it feel so real?<p>

My gaze trips down to her face, and my frown morphs into a grimace of pain as the facts hit me. What does it matter where that memory comes from? What does any of it matter anymore? Elena is dead, and everything that had ever meant anything to me is now gone.

Slowly, I slide my arms under her, pulling her with me as I stand up. She's heavier than I remember, but then I realise that it's because I'm human now, without my vampire strength. Funny how that used to be my ultimate dream. Now it seems pointless, useless. I stumble over to the bed and lay her down gently, resting her head against the pillow. As I look down at her, at her wavy hair fanned out around her face, another memory forces its way into my mind.

* * *

><p><em>We are sitting on a blanket on a deserted beach, the setting sun like a fiery halo around her hair. I hold out a grape, but instead of reaching out with her hand, Elena leans forward and bites into the soft flesh, her teeth grazing my finger. As the juice spills onto my hand, her tongue flicks out, sliding up my thumb. Her eyes stare boldly into mine the entire time, and the sight is so erotic it is all I can do to keep my hands to myself. I hear her stomach rumbling, so I pull my hand back and pull out boxes of her favourite things.<em>

_We eat in silence, our legs entwined together in the soft sand, letting the dying sun slowly dry our bodies, the salt from the water giving her skin an unearthly glow. When she has eaten her fill, I pack the boxes away. I hear her giggle slightly, and I turn back to find her sitting closer to me than before._

"_What's so funny?" I ask, the sound of her laugh making my heart soar. It's the laugh she only ever uses around me._

"_Just how human you look right now," she says, and she runs a finger tip slowly up my arm. I swallow, trying to hold back the involuntary shudder that goes through me at her touch. I smile slightly, to cover my nerves. "What?" She asks, the laughter still in her voice._

"_It can't last, you know," I say, and I know the words have more than the one meaning I'm thinking of._

_She looks at me for a moment, and then her finger tip moves up my arm to my face, gently tracing my lower lip. Before I can say anything, she leans in and presses her lips to mine._

_I freeze for a moment, desire and caution at war with each other. But I have wanted this for far too long to let the fear of rejection stop me from enjoying this moment, and I reach for her, a small moan of longing escaping me. She pulls me down on top of her as she lays back against the blanket, her hair wavy from our time spent in the water. My hand is at the back of her neck, and I pull on the strings of her bikini top, sliding my lips down her jaw to her neck, pulling the material away and flinging it over my shoulder. She arches into me, biting her lip, and as my hand closes over her bare breast, I think I might explode with desire. I stare up at her face, and the world around me starts to dim, and I know the moment is over._

"_It's time for me to go," I say, although I have never wanted anything less._

"_What? No! Don't leave me!" She cries, opening her eyes, pinning me with her chocolate brown orbs._

"_Elena," I whisper, drinking in the sight of her, spread out beneath me, even as the world around me darkens. "You'll have to take it back soon, you know."_

_I can feel myself starting to fade, and I lean down to capture her lips with my own one more time. As the nothingness swallows me once more, I hear her voice on the wind, calling my name._

* * *

><p>I pull out of the memory that isn't my own and climb onto the bed beside her. I know there are things I should be doing, people I should be calling, but I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not ready for others to mourn her, because I haven't even started yet. I know that when I do, the pain will be like nothing I have ever felt before. At the moment I'm just numb, like I was when my switch was turned off. I move my feet, and my toes brush against something hard lying on the end of the bed. I look down, and see a book. I reach down and pick it up, and I realise that it is the journal I had wrapped up for her. There is a piece of the blue ribbon marking a page, and I open it, my heart clenching as I see her personal messy hand writing.<p>

_Dear Jeremy,_

_If you are reading this, then my plan didn't work. I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you like this, but I need you to understand. I couldn't live without him. Ever since he died, there has been a piece of me missing, I feel empty, hollow. I need you to know that I didn't do this on a whim. There was a chance that I would make it through this, and I would never have left you alone if there wasn't. I did know that there was also a chance that this wouldn't work, but I needed to take it. He deserves that from me. I hope in time you will understand why I did this, and I hope you will learn to forgive me for leaving you. And please don't blame Damon, either. If he had known what to do, he would have done it, because he loves me._

_And I love you Jeremy. Please don't ever forget that. And I will always be here with you, if you look hard enough._

_Elena._

"Elena, what did you do?" I breathe out, and I turn back the pages, desperately searching for the last entry. Finally I find it, and I scan the page, words and phrases jumping out at me. She had dreamed about the original doppelganger, and I read her account of it, my heart tripping over as my horror grows. And then I realise. It's not my heart, it's hers. She had given it to me.

I drop the book down on the bed and turn to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her again. "Elena!" I shout, panic rising in my chest as I realise that I don't know what to do. "Elena, you have to wake up! I don't know what to do, I don't know how to fix this!" As I utter the last phrase, another memory bursts into my conscious.

* * *

><p><em>I am standing in the parlour of my home, staring across at Elena in irritation. "I can't do this anymore," I say, running my hands through my hair in agitation. "I can't just be here anymore. You have to fix this, Elena!"<em>

"_Fix what?" She shouts back at me, and I can tell by her bewildered expression that she doesn't understand. I'm not sure I do either, but the words burst out of me, as though I have no control._

"_Whatever it is that you did! You need to fix it!"_

"_I can't fix something if I don't know what I did!"_

"_Then you need to let me go," I say, walking closer to her and gripping her arms. "Let me go."_

"_I can't!" She cries, tears spilling over her cheeks, and I cringe inwardly, hating the fact that I have made her cry. Again._

"_Why not?" I ask, forcing my voice to become quieter, softer._

"_Because... because..." She stumbles, seemingly unable to find the right words._

_But I've had enough of this. It's time for her to tell me where I stand. "Tell me, Elena. Why can't you let me go?"_

"_Because I love you!"_

_The words fall out of her mouth, and I can tell that they surprise her. I wait for her to take it back, to tell me she didn't mean it, that she meant it in the way she loves her friends or her brother, and as her lips part, I hold my breath, waiting to hear the words that will crush me like they did before. It will always be Stefan..._

"_I do, I love you Damon..."_

_She carries on speaking, but I no longer hear the words. I love you Damon. She had actually said it! The need to have her in my arms becomes unbearable, and I pull her towards me, crashing my lips against hers. Heat explodes between us, and suddenly she is backed up against the wall, her body moulded against mine as she pulls me closer, closer. I lift her up, and she wraps her legs around me, and I think I might lose it right now._

"_I'll fix it," she mumbles, her hands in my hair, her hips grinding against mine. "I promise, I'll try harder."_

_I shush her; I really don't want to talk right now. As she pulls my lips back to hers, she falls back, and together we fall through the wall, somehow landing on my bed. I would think this was strange, but my brain is far too preoccupied with the fact that this is Elena writhing beneath me, this is Elena pulling at my t shirt. I try to take it slowly, wanting to savour the moment, but she won't let me, her tiny hands fumbling to open my jeans. I try to stretch it out, but it's not long before we are both completely naked. As I hold myself above her, I wait for her to change her mind, to realise that this isn't what she wants. Instead, she wraps her legs around my waist, guiding me closer, hissing out my name as I slide inside her. Right where I belong._

_We move together slowly, and the feeling is so right and natural, like we've done this hundreds of times before. I think maybe we should have. Our need for each other builds quickly between us, and our movements get faster, more desperate. As I reach for her hand, I feel the tension building inside me, and I know I won't last much longer. I look down at her, and she smiles at me._

"_I love you, Damon," she whispers, and her words push me over the edge, her name falling from my lips as I crash into her._

_We slump together onto the bed, with me still inside her. As I lift my hand to smooth her hair away from her face, all I can think is that I feel like I've finally come home._

* * *

><p>I look down at the still girl lying beside me, the memory that felt so real slowly fading from my mind. "Did that really happen?" I whisper to her, knowing she won't answer. "Did you mean it?"<p>

I lie down next to her, and another memory surfaces, one I actually remember happening. I remember her whispering that she likes me now, just the way I am. I remember the soft feel of her lips against mine, as I slipped further into the darkness.

And I remember the darkness, pressing in all around me. I remember seeing a bright light coming towards me, and wondering what hell will be like, because I certainly wouldn't be going to heaven. And then I remember hearing a heartbeat in the darkness, a sound so familiar to me that it sounded like a song, calling to me, pulling me further into the pitch blackness, away from the light. And then I remember not caring whether or not I would be going to hell, because as long as I could hear that heartbeat, I wouldn't be going anywhere.

The darkness was suffocating, but it didn't matter, because she was breathing for me, I could feel it, feel my lungs expanding in time with hers, as somewhere far, far above me, she lay in my arms. As I waited there, in the nothingness, the heartbeat that kept me tethered to her came closer, until I could feel it as well as hear it, beating against my ribs.

Just like I can still feel it now. I pull her body into my arms and hold her tight, tears leaking out and soaking her hair.

"Please," I whisper against her, "please, don't leave me. I need you. Please. I love you."

Pain washes over me as the truth starts to sink in, crippling me. As I try to hold in the sobs building in my chest, I hear a soft moan. In my newly humanized state, I can't tell where the noise has come from, and I hesitantly turn to look behind me. But the room is empty. Maybe I made the noise, I think, as I turn back to look at the girl lying in my arms, her chocolate brown eyes staring back at me.

"Elena?" I mouth, shock taking my voice.

She smiles at me. "I knew you'd find me."

"What... How..." I can't form any sentences, I'm in too much shock.

"I told you I'd fix it," she says, her hand coming up to stroke my face.

I had been frozen, teetering between disbelief and elation, and this simple touch brings me back to life. I pull her hard against me, holding her close, as if by this action I can be sure that she'll never leave me again. She shushes me, and as I release my hold slightly, she pulls her face up to mine, and presses her lips against me.

"I fixed it, Damon. I got you back. Promise me you won't ever leave me again." Her kisses are as feverish as my own, the salt from our tears mingling together on our lips.

"I'll promise you if you promise me," I murmur, wiping her face dry with my palm.

She looks up at me, her chocolate brown eyes staring into mine. "I promise. I love you, Damon."

"And I promise I will never leave you again. I love you, Elena."

We stare into each other for a long moment, neither of us moving, just revelling in the fact that we are both here, now. All around us is silent, the only sound our heartbeats, thumping in tandem with each other.

* * *

><p><em>If you are reading this journal, then it means that you are a doppelganger, and that I have somehow found a way to get this to you, just as Charlotte reached out to me. You are probably looking for advice, so this is what I will tell you: When you find love, as scary and all consuming as it may be, don't ever let it go. If you can push aside the fear long enough, you will find a world such as you have never imagined. If you find someone who loves you as much as my Damon loves me, you will be the second luckiest girl to have ever lived. Take it, take the opportunity with both hands, hold on to it as if your life depended on it, because it does. Because you haven't truly lived until you have experienced something as deep and passionate as this love. I hope that my story helps you, and helps you realise that regret is not an easy thing to live with. It buries you, smothers you, until you can no longer live with the weight of it on your shoulders. Live, my ancestor, live. Live with passion, tenderness, and above all live with love in your heart. If you give your heart completely to someone who loves you more than life itself, you will be rewarded beyond your wildest imaginations.<em>

_Elena Gilbert, 2010._

* * *

><p><em><em>**A/N: So yeah, you never really know what happens with that spell, so I guess you'll just have to believe in the power of magic! ;) I hope you liked it!  
><strong>


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